Preservation Hall, the institution so integral
to the American cultural and musical heritage we now know,
stands on St. Peter Street in the heart of the French Quarter.
The people revealed and preserved in these wonderful images
by photographer, Bob Coke, were the unique musicians who shared
their passion, their vision, and their hearts for years in
the old historic building, the quaint venue where jazz musicians
and listeners were welcome, but photographers and cameras
were not.
As such, this exhibition and the collections
of photographs on view become all the more unusual, although
the stories of the photographs and those photographed stand
on their own as quite remarkable.
Born in Brookhaven, Mississippi in 1920, Bob
Coke was the son of a minister. When his father became disabled
as a young man from a severe mastoid infection, Coke found
himself leaving school early to help support the family. In
1933, he went to work with the WPA delivering work cards that
revealed assignments to hungry prospective workers. He later
went to work for a local grocery store making $4.50 / week.
As a teenager, Coke developed two passions,
photography and the girls of Whitworth College. He later explained
that the students at the girls school were easier to date
for a young lad strapped for cash. He could walk his date
downtown from the campus to Hoffman's Drug Store for conversation
and two Cokes... the total date price, twenty-five cents.
Although he had access to a box camera as early
as 1935, it was not until 1947 that Coke bought his first
camera from Floyd and Billy East at the East Drug Store in
Brookhaven. Through various jobs and locations over the coming
years, the one thing remained constant for the young man with
only seven years of formal education, he continued a life
of learning as he viewed the world around him through the
view-finder of a camera lens. Part of that world involved
a job with Globe Photos of New York. Coke was the still photographer
for the film, THE CINCINNATI KID, starring Steve McQueen,
and also served as photographer for the TV program, THIS PROUD
LAND, hosted by Robert Preston.
Following a stint in Memphis working at a cloth
manufacturing plant and later as a switchman for the railroad,
Coke migrated to New Orleans in 1951. Never straying too far
from his camera, he worked as an aerial photographer for Photo
Maps, Inc. and did some freelance work, primarily black and
white prints. In 1952, he went to work for Bennett's Camera
Store in New Orleans, where he continued his own passion of
capturing images through the eyes of his lens, even doing
consultant photography for the pathology department of the
LSU medical school.
During his twelve years at Bennett's, Coke
met a few New Orleans characters, including one Johnny Lagattuta,
a banker who was also a shaker and mover. It was Lagattuta's
relationship with Larry Borenstein, the entrepreneur art dealer
with a love for jazz, that gave Coke his photographic crack
in the Preservation Hall door. Borenstein was the practical
founder of the Hall, and as one writer noted he "loved
the thrilled of finder a nugget among the slag," whether
it be merchandise or man, then showing it off to raise its
value.
At the encouragement of his friend, Hohnny
Lagattuta, Bob Coke was charged to photograph the jazzmen.
Lagattuta, who was financially and otherwise tied to Borenstein,
obtained free passage for Coke and his camera into the inner
circle. Many times over the next several years, Bob Coke blended
into the PReservation Hall atmosphere to record a visual image
of these ground breaking jazz performers and composers, whose
sounds would become intergrated into much of the contemporary
music we hear today.
Written by Dr. Kim Sessums
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