The Jazz Loft Avenue of the Americas

by Jackie Neale

© Jackie Neale @therealjackiephoto - This image cannot be redistributed without permission/editorial payment from the photographer

Guitar Hang began during the pandemic. During a time in which we were allowed to hang outdoors, yet still had to maintain our distance. I put my front porch of my new home to use in a town full of Brooklyn and Philadelphia expats just 10 minutes from Center City Philly. The town itself is filled to the brim with talented musicians and artists. A town in a time and place where there is openness to be expressive in an essentially kind and supportive community.

My building, where we spontaneously hang playing guitar just to play what’s on our minds, is an old Victorian house flanked by parking lots and is right next to the PATCO Speedline (a subway) station in Collingswood, New Jersey. An artist hamlet if we want to be twee about it. The building used to house a chiropractor’s office on the first floor, with a floor-through-out living space on the upper floors. It’s now my studio and gallery where I hold weird, avant garde exhibitions, shows, and events, and being located within a commercial district, where I have no neighbors to speak of, it’s an excellent place for people to play loudly and without inhibition. We have a great time and not worry too much about anything since it’s not a band practice and no one arrives with much expectation other than this being a place to play, sing, practice something, learn something, laugh, and to have a drink with friends in a no-judgment zone.

My friends have come to know my space as a place they can walk in and out of and feel right at home and I love this. In the warmer months we play on the front porch and in the colder months we play on the second floor in the wide-open area where we can all see and hear each other play.

It’s funny, being a professional photographer, I learned of W. Eugene Smith, Master Photographer at Life Magazine, many years ago in my Documentary class at NYU with Fred Ritchin when he taught about the industry changing photo essay, Country Doctor. Smith was the master of dramatic storytelling visuals in long form essays published in a large format magazine. His work and many others defined what it was to become a photojournalist, and in recent years I have applied to his foundation’s grant, the W. Eugene Smith Fund. And it was many, many years ago when I began to do deeper research on Gene Smith that I learned about his photographs and tapes of what became known as The Jazz Loft.

What is The Jazz Loft? The Jazz Loft was simple. It was what every artist in pre-aughts New York knew New York to be. It was a rag-tag commercial loft in the middle of a commercial district, The Flower District, on 6th Avenue between W27th & W28th Sts, that had no heat, no shower, no kitchen, and a huge floor through-out to use as a place to create, manufacture, fabricate, and the like. 821 Avenue of the Americas (aka 6th Ave) was at first home to a painter, David Young, who opened the loft to jazz musicians to come and jam after hours; after clubs closed.

Jazz musicians by the likes of Hall Overton, Charlie Parker, Sonny Clark, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Steve Swallow, Chick Corea, and more would swing by the loft to hang out, play tunes, try new ideas, practice, swap stories, write music, etc… with almost every name in the industry, and W. Eugene Smith being the documentarian that he was, moved into the building, rigged and wired the whole building from the front door to the roof with mics, and recorded 4000 continuous hours of what was played and talked about in the space unobstructed, uninterrupted. Along with endless reels of tape, Smith captured somewhere around 40,000 photographs from his time living at The Loft.

The tape recordings went completely undiscovered until the 1990’s when a historian dove deep into Smith’s archives and found the tapes. These tapes include everything from live music to the creaking of the front door opening to the footsteps on the stairs leading up to the loft to the most mundane of phone conversations making Doctor's appointments to sleeping to Hall Overton’s piano lessons to Thelonious Monk orchestrating his performances with fellow musicians (apparently there’s a lot of tape of Monk).

Countless tapes and hundreds of photographs were taken during these 24/7 jazz hang sessions, The Jazz Loft was a revolving door of spontaneity in a painter’s loft with no schedule, no rhyme, no reason. No one knew. It wasn’t publicized. And this was essential to maintain the anonymity of the space. To get in you just had to know. It just existed and was an open door for anyone who was in the know and wanted to keep up with and cut their teeth with some of the best jazz and avant-garde musicians in the world.

I’m not going to ingratiate myself to say the Guitar Hangs at my space are as cool as The Jazz Loft. In the 50s and 60s. In New York City. But it’s pretty damn close.

My studio/gallery space is called Big Day Film Collective, and I have held exhibitions of some of the most well-known photographers in the world. Here. In Collingswood. I’ve held lectures, film festivals, protests, demonstrations, interventions, I shoot musicians and personalities here, I have a darkroom, and I create historical processes, and I teach. All from here. People file in and out of here knowing the place is a genesis of ideas and anything can be made possible here. Try it out. Here. Where no one is looking, but find some of the best minds filing through here to help you work your idea through. Whether it be music or visual art, these minds will follow that thread with you to something genius. Some of the most brilliant minds are located within these 5 square miles, and no one suspects it. So it is GREAT.

Back in 2015, WNYC made a radio series of 10 episodes investigating The Jazz Loft tapes, how it came to be, why W. Eugene Smith, and closely examining the 4000 hours of recordings from The Jazz Loft. W. Eugene Smith died in 1978, and 20 years posthumously a researcher, Sam Steveson, discovered stacks of quarter inch tape in the corner of W. Eugene Smith’s archives. The tapes were virtually untouched. Stevenson listened. WNYC in New York made a radio series, and a documentary was made - Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith.

Me. I am photographing my guitar hangs now and again between playing guitar and singing myself. Times have changed, and everyone is sensitive to being recorded or photographed in these more vulnerable situations. But now that I remembered The Jazz Loft, I also remember how important it is to document movements like this, and the artists and musicians who made it happen. These musicians are nutso talented, and without too much fanfare or any social media attention we’re creating amongst ourselves, for ourselves and it is pretty fucking fulfilling to have something as genuine as that, happening in 2024, in an outskirt of Philadelphia.

As my friend Nick Cain from Rain Still Falls says, “Jackie, music is the light.” And I agree, music connects us and it is the light that pulled this group of people out of the pandemic isolation to make and create and play together. Music is the Light.

Guitar Hang Mainstay Musicians:

Gerald Neale - Five Finger Disco, Shroeder, The Shoobs

Jackie Neale - Shady Curtains nyc

Chad Rutkowski

Walter Svekla - The Trans Megetti, Ensign, God Like Diablo

Ger O’Sullivan

Richard Creamer

Bill Randazzo - The Unstoppable Hackbeats, Love Catastrophe

Monica Miller - Psychic Wars

Stacey Rutkowski

Stacey Brown-Downham - The Classic Brown

Kevin Murphy - The Commiserators

Mikey Wilcox

Interlopers:

Nick Cain - Rain Still Falls, Kill It

John Falco - Charming Snakes, The Commiserators, 609, Universal Rundle

Travis - Psychic Wars

Barry Hollander - Jersey Corn Pickers, The Michele Show

Katy Resch

Gregory Pardlo - Pulitzer Prize Poet

Kathy Volk Miller - Painted Bride Quarterly

House Concerts:

Bobby Bare Jr. - Feb. 2024

Love? Said the Commander - Feb. 2024

Jackie Neale is a photographer and photographic artist working out of New York, Philadelphia and Collingswood. She shoots music, personalities, and art world people, but also exhibits her work widely in the U.S. and abroad in Venice, Milan, Malta, Mexico, Canada, and more.

Find her on Instagram: @therealjackiephoto