Time and Time Again Marian Mcpartland

Marian McPartland hosted NPR's Piano Jazz for 33 years. Courtesy of the artist hide explanation

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Courtesy of the creative person

Marian McPartland hosted NPR'south Piano Jazz for 33 years.

Courtesy of the artist

More than half a century ago this week, on Aug. 12, 1958, some of the greatest jazz musicians of the mean solar day assembled in Harlem at what was, for them, the ungodly hour of ten a.m. 50-seven players came to East 126th Street to have their picture taken for Esquire mag.

Freelance photographer Art Kane bunched them together in front of the steps of two brownstones. Some neighborhood kids plunked down on the curb — so did pianist-bandleader Count Basie. And "A Not bad Twenty-four hour period in Harlem" was captured in a black-and-white paradigm.

Jazz pianist Marian McPartland was one of just 3 women in the photograph. She'south wearing a halter apparel like the one Marilyn Monroe wore when she stood over that windy subway grate — but McPartland's apparel sits apartment and proper.

"I never get tired of looking at that picture — one of the world's greatest photos," McPartland tells NPR'southward Susan Stamberg. "I was working at the Hickory House, and Nat Hentoff came rushing in and said, 'You lot've got this date to accept this pic taken at 10 o'clock.' And I didn't peculiarly want to go upwardly that early, but I did."

The picture shows Giddy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Gene Krupa, Maxine Sullivan, Mary Lou Williams, Gerry Mulligan, Lester Immature, Sonny Rollins — all the '50s gods of jazz. Marian McPartland stands out non only as a adult female, only as white, foreign and young.

"It seems like everybody encouraged me and let me exist myself, and gradually things grew together," she says. "Nobody bothered whether I was black or white. I just wanted to play better and listen to a lot of people, people I really loved — Pecker Evans and horn players similar Sonny Rollins. I simply wanted to hear everybody."

In that location'southward a new documentary flick about Marian McPartland. In Good Time: The Piano Jazz of Marian McPartland is full of archival footage, family photos and interviews. Documentary filmmaker James R. Coleman Jr., who goes past the name Huey, spent 5 years making the film.

Marian McPartland and filmmaker Huey subsequently a cast and coiffure screening of In Good Time in Port Washington, Due north.Y., in 2001. Films By Huey hibernate caption

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Films Past Huey

"I was very lucky," he says. "There were and then many wonderful moments, and one of the precious moments is when, in the show, Jimmy McPartland — Marian's husband — and Marian are on together and talk near how they first met, which was a real precious stone to find."

Marian McPartland says she met Jimmy in war-torn Europe.

"He was a foot soldier, and I was working in USO camp shows. Somehow we got together over there, and we were married in Aachen, Germany — so we were married by the fourth dimension we got back here to Chicago," she says. "It took a while for us to uproot ourselves and motility to New York, because that'south where things really happened more than. And Jimmy institute a gig for his band, and I was at the Hickory House, then nosotros were all decorated."

McPartland says the Hickory House, the storied jazz spot and steakhouse in midtown Manhattan, was a special kind of club.

"People just walked in," she says. "A lot of times they would just jump on the bandstand and sit in with me. It was a ball."

Duke Ellington, with whom McPartland shared a press agent, would come to see her play, besides.

"I recall he made a sort of a subtle criticism," she says. "He said, 'Oh, you play so many notes.' I thought, 'He'due south obviously telling me that I'chiliad playing also many notes,' so from that I kind of eased off a little flake. I was probably showing off."

All those notes found a home for xxx years on public radio. Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz began in 1979. The first plan was recorded in the Baldwin Piano exhibit on 59th Street in New York.

Some 700-plus programs later — her concluding show was recorded in 2010 — the series keeps running with archival tapes, plus new ones with new hosts. At 94, McPartland remains the show's artistic director. Her radio guests included all the jazz greats: Baton Taylor, Bill Evans, Sarah Vaughan, Bill Frisell, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Dave Brubeck, George Shearing, Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles, Tony Bennett.

Krall, Brubeck, Frisell and many others appear in In Skillful Fourth dimension. The film will exist screened this autumn at jazz festivals in Savannah, Ga., and Seattle.