A (minor) blues archeological discovery!

Roy Langbord, the photographer of my favorite Oblivion photo (actually, one of my favorite blues photos ever), was routing through an old book and out dropped a pile of 35 year old negatives from Blues from a 1974 Blues from the Apple session. We haven’t had a chance to pull individual frames for processing, but I thought you’d get a kick out of the raw contact sheets we just made. Nothing special here, but a chance to see folks at work —harpists Bill Dicey and Goody Hunt, bassists Sonny Harden & Tom Pomposello (co-producer and my Oblivion partner), guitarist Foxy Ann Yancey, drummer Ola Mae Dixon, and of course, Charles Walker— trying to make a great date. 

As is often the case with independent labels, Oblivion didn’t have any budget for professional photographers so we asked our friends who were so inclined to stop by (Roy’s actually a music loving New York entertainment attorney). And, we were young and somewhat disorganized (at least I was) and things like negatives get lost in the fray.

My fondest hope for these shots ended with my biggest disappointment. A few of the shots were clearly from the same roll as my Foxy Ann Yancey fave and my pipe dream was that we’d find the original 35mm neg and be able to do a proper print of the thing (the only one we have was a quick and dirty). And while there were a number of outtakes (none showing Ann to be quite as menacing and unapproachable as the original, quite the opposite, in fact) the keeper was nowhere to be found.

Ah well, maybe it’s in a poetry book of Roy’s somewhere.