Last week Jazz ABZ opened at The Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, FL. I’d like to thank Museum Director Hope McMath and all the staff of the museum for mounting the show. The gallery looks beautiful and the opening was a wonderful experience. Over 1000 people came out, there were lots of families, and the music was great. I met some nice people and heard a lot of stories about jazz music and musicians, including a gentleman who told me he loaned Ella Fitzgerald money when her band was stranded in Boston. I was so busy, I forgot to take any pictures at the opening. I’ll be back for a talk during the Jacksonville Jazz Festival.

The book was a project I started without a publisher. I had the idea for an abecedary of jazz musicians, made a list of one for each letter of the alphabet, and started working on the images in-between my other assignments. Because there was no deadline, and there was the strong possibility that these would never see the light of day, I decided to do whatever I wanted with them, and to borrow (you're right . . . steal) from the artists I admired from each era that the jazz musician is associated with. The list of artists includes Stuart Davis, Paul Rand, Miquel Covarrubias, the forgotten French designer Pierre Merlin, Al Hirshfeld, Juan Gris, David Stone Martin, and Alex Steinweiss.