2006年VOA标准英语-Timeless Jazz Photo Marks Time

By Doug Levine
Washington
05 September 2006

With each passing year, memories of a photograph taken in New York City on a hot August morning in 1958, become just a little bit sweeter. VOA's Doug Levine takes us back to "A Great Day In Harlem."

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On a day not unlike a sultry, steamy summer day in Washington, D.C., the concrete steps of a brownstone apartment building on 126th Street in New York's Harlem neighborhood became the setting for the jazz photograph seen around the world. It was there that 57 giants of jazz gathered at 10:00 o'clock in the morning to have their picture taken.

A Great Day in Harlem, fine art print  
  
Rookie photographer Art Kane, on assignment from Esquire magazine, couldn't believe how many musicians actually showed up. And on time! Nobody was more surprised than filmmaker Jean Bach, who documented the photo shoot in her 1995 Oscar-nominated film, A Great Day In Harlem.

"Apparently¹ they did start at 10 a.m. which gave rise to one of the laugh lines in the movie," she said. "Somebody said he didn't know there were two 10 o'clocks in the same day. They were so amazed it was in the morning. But when the sun changed they moved across the street. So, Art had two, more or less, identical houses facing each other and he moved from one to the other. He selected it because he liked the idea of the stairs. They could make kind of a pyramid that way and you get to see all the faces. And, as he points out, all but one."

The one face you don't see belonged to trumpeter Roy Eldridge.

"Roy absolutely mesmerized³ Dizzy Gillespie, and Dizzy was always playing tricks on him," Bach said. "Trumpet² players of that era were all insane about Roy Eldridge, and Dizzy was no exception. So just to needle [tease] Roy a little bit, Roy turned around to say something to him, and Dizzy stuck his tongue out. Roy didn't get his face in the photograph. You see a kind of side-back view of his head."

A Great Day in Harlem DVD   
  
"When this movie came out [it] swept around the world," she continued. "I mean it was being shown everyplace. Every city that it played [in] decided⁴ to do a copycat photo. 'A Great Day In Harlem' was all the musicians of the day, mainly based in New York. But now we have every city in the world, including one from Amsterdam, which I love because they spell it "A Great Day In Harlem" with two a's."

A Great Day In Harlem, now on DVD, includes the original one-hour documentary plus five new segments: Art Kane, The Copycat Photos, The Next Generation: Bill Charlap and Kenny Washington, and profiles of all 57 musicians titled Explore The Photos.

1 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

2 trumpet   

n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘

参考例句：

• He plays the violin, but I play the trumpet.他拉提琴，我吹喇叭。
• The trumpet sounded for battle.战斗的号角吹响了。

3 mesmerized   

v.使入迷( mesmerize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The country girl stood by the road, mesmerized at the speed of cars racing past. 村姑站在路旁被疾驶而过的一辆辆车迷住了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• My 14-year-old daughter was mesmerized by the movie Titanic. 我14岁的女儿完全被电影《泰坦尼克号》迷住了。 来自互联网

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。