Francis Wolff
Francis Wolff · Arts & Literature
Berlin-born Jewish refugee who co-ran Blue Note Records and photographed its sessions — the album covers that became the visual memory of jazz.
5 avril 1907, Berlin, Allemagne — 8 mars 1971, New York, États-Unis
Berlin, New York
Francis Wolff is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Berlin-born Jewish refugee who co-ran Blue Note Records and photographed its sessions — the album covers that became the visual memory of jazz.
Berlin
Jakob Franz 'Franny' Wolff was born on 5 April 1907 in Berlin and worked there as a commercial photographer. He emigrated to the United States to flee persecution as a Jew, leaving Berlin for New York in the late 1930s — just as his childhood friend Alfred Lion was founding a jazz label.
The photographer of Blue Note
He joined Alfred Lion in running Blue Note Records and, throughout the label's great years, photographed its musicians during session rehearsals — Monk, Blakey, Silver, caught mid-thought in smoke and lamplight. The pictures went onto the publicity material and the album covers, and they remain the visual memory of jazz's golden age.
The legacy
Wolff stayed with Blue Note after Alfred Lion retired in 1967, and ran it until the end: he died of a heart attack following surgery in New York on 8 March 1971, at sixty-four. His thousands of session photographs are collected in books and exhibitions, and still define how the world pictures jazz.
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Source: Wikipedia
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Berlin-born Jewish refugee who co-ran Blue Note Records and photographed its sessions — the album covers that became the visual memory of jazz.
Source: Wikipedia
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