the Backroom



Daniel Kramer Bringing It All Back Home, 1932-2024

by Chris Murray on May 7, 2024  |  1 Comment »

Bob Dylan, New York City, 1965. Photo by Daniel Kramer.

 

Daniel Kramer‘s photographs of Bob Dylan were a primary inspiration when I systematically began to champion significant photographs documenting musical artists. I remember so well when Daniel’s book, Bob Dylan, was published in 1967. I was a sophomore at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited had both been released in 1965. Those two albums changed my life with Dylan combining his poetry/songs with electric music. I would sit listening to both of those recordings while looking at the images on the album covers. They seemed to me at the time to be simultaneously enigmatic and revelatory. Worlds opened up to me listening to those two recordings. And Daniel Kramer just happened to take the photographs on the covers of both of those seminal albums.

It was a great pleasure and honor for me to “discover” Daniel Kramer and present the first exhibition of his Bob Dylan photos at Govinda Gallery in 1999. Just a few months later, I brought that same exhibition to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. Daniel was so pleased to see his work exhibited in those venues. I also presented his work at Paul Allen’s Experience Music Project Museum (now known as the Museum of Pop Culture) in Seattle in 2001, and the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in 2005 . I went on to work with Daniel for two decades, continuously showing his work at Govinda Gallery. He was a master of the medium.

Harrison Smith at the Washington Post wrote a wonderful obituary about Daniel Kramer, who passed away last week. I present that story here below.

 

DANIEL KRAMER, WHO PHOTOGRAPHED BOB DYLAN GOING ELECTRIC, DIES AT 91

Kramer captured Dylan’s shift from folk to rock, taking pictures that were featured on the covers of “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited.”

By: Harrison Smith

Daniel Kramer’s photograph of Bob Dylan and Sally Grossman, the wife of the musician’s manager, was used for the cover of Dylan’s 1965 album “Bringing It All Back Home.” (Daniel Kramer/© Estate of Daniel Kramer/Staley-Wise Gallery, New York)

 

Daniel Kramer, a photographer whose strikingly intimate portraits of Bob Dylan captured the singer-songwriter during a pivotal year in popular music, tracing his evolution from a cheery, tousle-haired folk act to an enigmatic, sunglass-clad rock star, died April 29 in Melville, N.Y. He was 91.

His death, at an assisted-living center, was confirmed by one of his nephews, Brian Bereck. He did not give a specific cause.

Mr. Kramer, a freelance photographer who had apprenticed under Diane Arbus and Life magazine stalwart Philippe Halsman, had no idea who Dylan was until he saw him perform “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” on “The Steve Allen Show” in 1964. “I hadn’t heard that kind of fresh poetry in years,” he told the Boston Globe much later. “When he was finished, I said, ‘I want to photograph him.’”

It would take six months of begging and pleading, including calls and letters to Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, before he got his chance.

Invited to come up to Woodstock, N.Y., for a one-hour shoot in August 1964, Mr. Kramer managed to stay for more than five hours, photographing the singer-songwriter at Grossman’s home (climbing trees, swinging on the porch, watching a movie) and at a cafe where Dylan had lunch and played chess. “It was like a courtship,” he recalled. “I guess I passed the test.”

Photos from Mr. Kramer’s first day with Dylan, at a cafe in Woodstock, N.Y. The pictures were featured in Mr. Kramer’s 2018 book “Bob Dylan: A Year and a Day.” (Daniel Kramer/Taschen)

 

For the next year, Mr. Kramer served as Dylan’s unofficial staff photographer, taking pictures of the musician at home, in the studio, on the road and in concert. His photographs — staged and spontaneous, in color and black-and-white — chronicled a period when one of folk music’s most renowned figures set aside his acoustic guitar and embraced a high-voltage sound, horrifying traditionalists while charting a new course for blues-based rock.

“There are other great photos of Bob Dylan, of course, but Dan Kramer’s pictures — at a certain place and time, and in the depth that he did it — are unparalleled,” said Washington gallery owner Chris Murray, who organized the first exhibitions of Mr. Kramer’s work, in a 2001 interview with American Photo magazine.

Like Alfred Wertheimer, who photographed a young Elvis Presley, and Astrid Kirchherr, who took pictures of the Beatles during their early days in Hamburg, Mr. Kramer captured his subject on the verge of breakout success. Many of his pictures revealed a playful side of the musician, wearing a top hat and sneering like the Mad Hatter outside Town Hall in Philadelphia; pretending to iron the hair of singer-songwriter Joan Baez, his girlfriend at the time; or mugging for the camera with Johnny Cash, who visited him backstage at a show in New Jersey.

Photos from Mr. Kramer’s 2018 book “Bob Dylan: A Year and a Day” show the singer-songwriter in the studio in 1965, the year he recorded the landmark albums “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” (Daniel Kramer/Taschen)

 

Others were more carefully choreographed and helped establish Dylan’s new public image. For the musician’s 1965 album “Bringing It All Back Home,” his first to incorporate electric instruments, Mr. Kramer orchestrated a cryptic cover photo showing Dylan sitting with a cat in his lap, surrounded by an eclectic mix of books, magazines, albums and artifacts, including a fallout shelter sign. A woman lounged in a red jumpsuit behind him, cigarette in hand. Adding to the mystery was a blurry swirl around the edge of the picture, a double exposure effect that Mr. Kramer created by building a rig that allowed him to rotate the camera.

“I wanted it to feel like the universe was moving around him,” Mr. Kramer explained.

The image was “as striking as Dylan’s new electric sound,” wrote British music critic Barney Hoskyns, assessing its impact in his 2016 book “Small Town Talk.” Fans investigated each detail, asking after the origins of a clown collage on the wall (made by Dylan himself from cut glass) and conspiratorially wondering whether the mystery woman wasn’t Dylan himself, donning drag. (In fact it was Sally Grossman, his manager’s wife.)

Mr. Kramer received a Grammy nomination for the photo, which was credited as a precursor to conceptual album covers like the photo collage used for the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Dylan used Mr. Kramer’s 1965 photo for the cover of his album “Highway 61 Revisited.” (Daniel Kramer/© Estate of Daniel Kramer/Staley-Wise Gallery, New York)

 

He went on to photograph the cover for Dylan’s acclaimed follow-up album, “Highway 61 Revisited,” which was released later that year and opened with “Like a Rolling Stone,” the singer’s first Top 10 hit. The cover photo showed Dylan wearing a Triumph motorcycle T-shirt under a jacket, sitting on a Manhattan stoop with his friend Bob Neuwirth partly visible behind him.

Unlike the cover for “Bringing It All Back Home,” the picture came together in a matter of minutes when the group arrived outside Grossman’s apartment. “Bob sat down and I thought it could be a cover — I knew he was trying to give me something,” Mr. Kramer told the Globe. “I asked my assistant for a camera and bing bing bing — done. Fifteen or 20 minutes. I think Bob lent himself to my ideas. I had to come up with these ideas pretty fast, day after day, and put it all together. Give Bob a stage to work on; give me a palette to draw from.”

Mr. Kramer said that after a year and a day of photographing Dylan, culminating with a rowdy concert at Forest Hills in New York City (some fans booed and shouted “we want the old Dylan” after he played his new electric songs), he and the musician went their separate ways. By his account, he and Dylan remained friendly, although there appeared to be bad blood for a time, as Dylan’s management team unsuccessfully sought an injunction to block the release of Mr. Kramer’s 1967 photo book “Bob Dylan,” published by the Citadel Press.

The portrait on the right, from Mr. Kramer’s 2018 book “Bob Dylan: A Year and a Day,” was used for the cover of the Dylan compilation “Biograph.” (Daniel Kramer/Taschen)

 

The rift seemed to have healed by 1985, when one of Mr. Kramer’s early portraits of Dylan was used for the musician’s “Biograph” box set.

Mr. Kramer continued to work as a freelance photographer, taking pictures of subjects that included author Norman Mailer, for Look magazine; former president Harry S. Truman, for Holiday; presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, for Fortune; and Mario Puzo, the author of “The Godfather,” for the cover of New York. He also found work in the corporate world, taking pictures that appeared in annual reports for Morgan Stanley.

But he maintained a special fondness for his year with Dylan, which he credited with transforming his approach to photography, leading him to take a more open-ended approach to shoots, and with introducing him to a joyous new artistic milieu.

While accompanying Dylan to Woodstock’s Cafe Espresso one night in 1964, he found himself participating in a jam session with a group that included Baez, Peter Yarrow, and Richard and Mimi Fariña. “I played the spoons,” he said, recalling a rare moment when he put aside his camera. “I was so thrilled. It was one of the great nights of my life.”

Mr. Kramer and Dylan in New York City in 1965. (Daniel Kramer/Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles)

 

The oldest of three children, Daniel Kramer was born in Brooklyn on May 19, 1932. His mother had an administrative job at what is now Brookdale hospital, and his father was a dockworker and amateur filmmaker who inspired Mr. Kramer’s interest in photography.

“By age 14, I had a one-boy show at the junior high school,” he told the New York Times. “I became a professional when someone offered me $5 to take a photo. I remember feeling embarrassed to take so much money for something that came so easily to me.”

Mr. Kramer served a stint in the Army’s Military Police Corps and studied at Brooklyn College. He worked as an assistant to Arbus and her then-husband, actor and photographer Allan Arbus, before spending three years with Halsman, who taught him how to work with celebrities (Mr. Kramer once went into the ring with boxer Muhammad Ali for a photo shoot) and to print his own photographs. Halsman also enlisted Mr. Kramer for projects like the “Jump Book,” a 1959 collection of portraits showing celebrities and statesmen leaping into the air. “One of my jobs was to wash the bottoms of Marilyn Monroe’s feet after each jump,” Mr. Kramer recalled.

By 1964, Mr. Kramer had a Manhattan studio of his own. He was aided for decades by his wife and collaborator, Arline Cunningham, a music-industry veteran he met one summer in the Hamptons as a house guest of her boss, singer-songwriter Judy Collins. Cunningham died in 2016.

Mr. Kramer in 2012 at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, where his work was featured in a Dylan exhibition. (Marina Helli/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Mr. Kramer, who leaves no immediate survivors, was deeply private, resisting calls to create a website or promote his work on social media. But he received renewed attention after Murray, the owner of Govinda Gallery in Georgetown, organized his first shows in 1999, curating exhibitions of Mr. Kramer’s Dylan pictures at Govinda and at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

His photos were later featured in exhibitions in Amsterdam, Havana, London and Los Angeles and were acquired by institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. A limited-edition book of his work, “Bob Dylan: A Year and a Day,” was published by Taschen in 2018.

That success was difficult for Mr. Kramer to imagine when he first pitched his Dylan photos in 1964, showing them to an editor at Pageant, a now-defunct national magazine, the year before Dylan rose to superstardom.

“The editor said, ‘I don’t need another scruffy kid with a guitar,’” he recalled. “But two weeks later, he called me and said, ‘Do you still have those pictures of that guitar player?’ Let’s look at them again. I have a 15-year-old daughter, and she said if I don’t publish them I’m crazy.’”

Dylan at the New York City restaurant O’Henry’s in 1965. (Daniel Kramer/© Estate of Daniel Kramer/Staley-Wise Gallery, New York)

 

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Mickalene Thomas, Black is Beautiful, and the New York Times

by Fabiola Castro on May 1, 2024  |  1 Comment »

This past Sunday, the New York Times published a feature story on our favorite contemporary artist, Mickalene Thomas, and her first major international tour, beginning with an exhibition at The Broad museum in Los Angeles, which opens on May 25th. Mickalene contributed a brilliant essay to Black is Beautiful (powerHouse Books) featuring LaMonte McLemore‘s photographs for JET magazine’s “Beauty of the Week” feature, which was edited by Govinda Gallery director, Chris Murray, with an introduction by Murray. Also featured are essays by Jayne Kennedy and Sylvia Flanagan.

 

JET magazine’s “Beauty of the Week” is one of the main inspirations –and indeed a direct reference and source material– for Mickalene’s work on the Black female figure.  In her essay for Black is Beautiful, Mickalene praises McLemore’s contribution to the celebration of Black women through his “Beauty of the Week” photos, stating that, “McLemore’s work was both groundbreaking as it challenged mainstream beauty standards and simultaneously celebrated the natural beauty of Black women. His photographs provided a platform for the concepts that have remained at the core of my work, such as the celebration of Black women as Icons.”

 

Mickalene Thomas. Photo by Amy Harrity for the New York Times.

 

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Poet Laureate Randall Jarrell As Seen By Ted Russell

by Chris Murray on April 23, 2024  |  1 Comment »

Randall Jarrell, Washington, DC, 1957. Photo by Ted Russell.

 

I was speaking with former LIFE photographer Ted Russell, whose extraordinary photographs of Bob Dylan from 1961 to 1964 were recently exhibited at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK, when he told me about his photographs of Randall Jarrell. Randall Jarrell was the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate of the United States. It is with great pleasure I share Ted Russell’s extraordinary portrait of the great American poet.

Ted Russell’s photographs are available through Govinda Gallery.

 

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Elvis at 21 Event on April 24th in Georgetown at 1310 Kitchen

by Patrick Pearse on April 17, 2024  |  1 Comment »

Lisa Marie Presley holding a copy of Elvis at 21 with Chris Murray, who co-authored Elvis at 21 with photographer Alfred Wertheimer.

“Elvis at 21” is coming up on April 24th! Get your tickets now to make sure you don’t miss this awesome evening! Noted curator Chris Murray, who co-authored the book “Elvis at 21” which showcases photos of Elvis from the pivotal year 1956, will present photographs from the book. The night will also include Elvis’s favorite foods and a signature cocktail courtesy of our own Chef Jenn Crovato! Tickets are limited so register now!

REGISTER HERE!

 

 

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John Sinclair, David Fenton, and John & Yoko

by Chris Murray on April 10, 2024  |  2 Comments »

John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the “Free John Sinclair” rally. Ann Harbor, MI, December 10, 1971. © David Fenton

 

The New York Times published activist John Sinclair‘s obituary this past Sunday. They illustrated the obituary with David Fenton‘s photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono performing at a concert and rally in Ann Harbor, Michigan with 15,000 supporters of Sinclair, who had been jailed with a sentence of 10 years in prison for sharing two joints with an undercover police officer. A few days after the rally, the Michigan Supreme Court announced that it was reviewing the case. Sinclair’s conviction was overturned after almost 2.5 years in jail. Sinclair also managed the Detroit rock band, The MC5.

Govinda Gallery just presented David Fenton’s remarkable photographs from the late 60s and early 70s in Havana, Cuba at the Contemporary Art Center Wifredo Lam. That exhibition was Govinda Gallery’s ninth cultural exchange with our Caribbean neighbor.

John Sinclair with his daughters as he is released from his cell block, December 13, 1971. © Hugh Grannum, Detroit Free Press

 

David Fenton’s photographs are available through Govinda Gallery.

 

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1310 Kitchen in Georgetown Presents Elvis at 21 with Chris Murray

by Patrick Pearse on April 3, 2024  |  3 Comments »

On April 24th, Govinda Gallery Director, Chris Murray, will be presenting an audio/visual presentation of Alfred Wertheimer‘s remarkable photographs of Elvis Presley in 1956. The venue is at the 1310 Kitchen & Bar in the Georgetown Inn. Murray co-authored with Wertheimer Elvis at 21 (Insight Editions, 2023) and is the curator of Wertheimer’s museum and gallery exhibitions. Presley biographer, Peter Guralnick, writes, “Alfred Wertheimer got great pictures. Like Elvis, by embracing spontaneity, by prizing feeling over mere technique, he found something new in familiar forms, and the result is work that can stand gloriously on its own, unaffected by the eddying tides of fashion of the shifting sands of time.”

Chef Jenn Crovato will be creating a menu inspired by Elvis’ favorite foods. A good time will be had by all. Registration details are below and all are invited. Copies of Elvis at 21 will be available after the presentation.

 

REGISTER HERE!

 

The Kiss, Mosque Theater, Richmond, Virginia.

 

Kneeling at the Mosque.

 

First Arrival, New York City.

 

The Elvis Stare.

 

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Celebrating Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup

by Chris Murray on March 27, 2024  |  3 Comments »

Tomorrow is the 50th Anniversary of the great blues man Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup‘s passing. This portrait of Arthur was taken by Dick Waterman, who recently passed on, and is included in the book I edited of Waterman’s photographs and stories, Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive.

 

Arthur Crudup, Melbourne, Australia, 1970. Photograph by Dick Waterman.

Big Boy Crudup’s songs influenced me growing up, as I first heard “That’s All Right, Mama,” “My Baby Left Me,” and “So Glad You’re Mine” as recorded by Elvis Presley in the mid-1950s. Those songs changed my life. This post from The Back Room is a tribute to Big Boy Crudup, who influenced both Dick Waterman and Elvis Presley.

On April 24th, Govinda Gallery Director, Chris Murray, will be giving an illustrated talk about Elvis Presley in 1956 at Jenn Crovato‘s 1310 Kitchen at the Georgetown Inn, in Washington, DC. Copies of Elvis at 21 (Insight Editions, 2023) will be available at the event.

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George Hurrell, The National Portrait Gallery, and Govinda Gallery

by Chris Murray on March 19, 2024  |  2 Comments »

The National Portrait Gallery just opened an exhibition of the legendary Hollywood celebrity glamour portrait photographer, George Hurrell. Ann M. Shumard, Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery writes that, “During the 1930s and early 1940s, George Hurrell reigned supreme as Hollywood’s preeminent portrait photographer. His timeless images helped define the public personas of some of the “Golden Ages’s” most glamorous figures.”

Govinda Gallery presented the last exhibition of George Hurrell’s photographs while he was alive. It was an extraordinary exhibition that featured, among others, portraits of Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo, Jane Russell, John Barrymore, Johnny Weissmuller, James Cagney, Joan Crawford, Anna May Wong, and many others.

Below is the Govinda Gallery invitation card from Hurrell’s exhibition at Govinda in 1992.

 

Original signed prints of George Hurrell’s stunning photographs are available through Govinda Gallery. Here is a sampling of a few of them. The National Portrait Gallery Exhibition continues until January 5th, 2025.

 

Greta Garbo, 1930.

 

Dorothy Lamour, 1930.

 

Ramon Navarro, 1930.

 

Jane Russell, 1941.

 

Hedy Lamarr, 1938.

 

Robert Taylor, 1936.

 

Douglas Fairbanks Jr., 1933.

 

Johnny Weissmuller, 1932.

 

Gary Cooper, 1937.

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Richard Lewis…A Reflection with Love

by Chris Murray on March 5, 2024  |  3 Comments »

 

I first got to know Richard Lewis as a rare book collector of musical titles at Govinda Gallery, and then as his collaborator on Reflections from Hell: Richard Lewis’ Guide On How Not To Live. It was my great pleasure to edit Reflections from Hell, write the preface and to bring it to publication with powerHouse Books. Working on that book together Richard and I became great friends.

 

Drawing by Carl Titolo.

 

The last time I was with Richard in person, with his wonderful wife Joyce just last year in Los Angeles, he gave me a framed drawing taken off the wall of his home by the artist Carl Titolo. Carl’s drawings accompany Richard’s ‘Refections’ in his powerHouse book. The drawing he gave me had been inscribed by Carl to Richard in February 2003. It said “Richard…Thanks for the empty wall! Carl.” Richard was an avid collector of Titolo’s art, as is Richard’s friend Larry David. The inscription reflected the fact that Richard had bought everything off the walls of Titolo’s studio! It meant so much to me that Richard gave me that drawing.  Carl had passed on only a few years earlier.

 

Chris Murray and Richard Lewis in Los Angeles.

 

I wrote in my preface to Reflections from Hell:  “I won’t soon forget Lewis’ words combined with Titolo’s works on paper. The collaboration immediately engaged me in a way that was intimate and personal while at the same time existential and universal. Their work together is a contemporary personification of creative angst from which we can laugh at the dilemmas of life we all face.”

 

Richard Lewis and Carl Titolo, Chicago, 2015.

 

 

Richard Lewis was one of the kindest people I have ever known. What a blessing to have him in my life. Saddened as I was at news of my dear friend passing on, I am comforted by the legacy he leaves for us all. Richard Lewis… a comedic genius, a devoted husband and a true friend.

 

Richard and Joyce.

“I love you.”

 

Richard absorbed in his Reflections, Chicago, 2015.

 

Available from powerHouse Books

 

“You will be in awe of how his synapses fire, how he observes life around him, how his brain sorts and compiles all the images it takes in. You might also notice how kind and sweet and generous he is.”

-Larry David, from his foreword to Reflections from Hell: Richard Lewis’ Guide On How Not To Live.

 

All photographs by Carlotta Hester.

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Black is Beautiful Book Launch with LaMonte McLemore and Friends in Las Vegas

by Chris Murray on February 27, 2024  |  3 Comments »

Black is Beautiful, featuring LaMonte McLemore‘s JET photographs is scheduled to be published today by powerHouse Books.

 

Black is Beautiful book cover.

 

It was my great pleasure and honor to collaborate these last few years with LaMonte McLemore in making this book. LaMonte, a founding member of The 5th Dimension vocal group also spent four decades taking photographs for JET Magazine’s “Beauty of the Week” feature.

 

The 5th Dimension.

 

Working with scans made by LaMonte and his friend, Le Roy Graham, from the original color slides, and with essays by Sylvia Flanagan, Jayne Kennedy, Mickalene Thomas, and myself, Black is Beautiful documents the important legacy that JET Magazine’s photographs for its “Beauty of the Week” feature left on Black women and culture.

Mickalene Thomas writes in her essay, “During a tumultuous time in American History and the Civil Rights Movement, LaMonte McLemore’s work for JET and EBONY magazines served as a radical depiction of the Black female body as both effortlessly beautiful and exceedingly powerful.”

Just last month, LaMonte’s beautiful wife, Mieko, hosted a party to celebrate LaMonte and Black is Beautiful in Las Vegas at M Resort Spa Casino. Mieko organized a cocktail party and a sit-down dinner for 200 friends of LaMonte. Mieko asked me to give an audio/visual presentation for Black is Beautiful to LaMonte’s friends. It was a truly amazing evening celebrating LaMonte and his artistry. Enjoy these photos from that event.

 

Chris Murray enjoying his first look at Black is Beautiful in Las Vegas.

 

Friends of LaMonte at the M Resort.

 

Preparing for the evening celebration of LaMonte McLemore.

 

Elanda Carter, a Beauty of the Week featured in Black is Beautiful. Photo by LaMonte McLemore.

 

Checking out the audio/visual system before the dinner.

 

Chris Murray with Mieko McLemore.

 

Claudia Jordan, JET Beauty of the Week.

 

Chris Murray greeting LaMonte McLemore at the entrance to the cocktail and dinner party.

 

M.C. for the evening, Merald “Bubba” Knight Jr. with Bill Overton getting things started.

 

Chris Murray greeting Sylvia Flanagan, former Senior Editor at Johnson Publishing Company, who contributed an essay to Black is Beautiful.

 

Sylvia Flanagan, 1987. Photo courtesy of the Chicago Sun Times.

 

Jayne Kennedy, Chris Murray, and Carlotta Hester getting together at the dinner.

 

Jayne Kennedy on the cover of JET Magazine, celebrating the New Year in 1975.

 

Jayne Kennedy with Bobby Brooks Wilson, Jackie Wilson‘s son.

 

Mieko McLemore with Bobby Brooks Wilson’s wife, Gladys.

 

Sylvia Flanagan with Bobby Brooks Wilson.

 

Twins Andreini and Andreina McPhearson shot by LaMonte McLemore for JET Magazine.

 

Left to right, Sylvia Flanagan, Chris Murray, LaMonte and Mieko McLemore, Jayne Kennedy, and Le Roy Graham.

 

Destiny, a Beauty of the Week featured in Black is Beautiful. Photo by LaMonte McLemore.

 

Sylvia Flanagan, Jayne Kennedy, and Chris Murray with LaMonte’s fellow 5th Dimension band members, from left to right, Florence LaRue, Billy Davis Jr., and Marilyn McCoo.

 

JET Beauty of the Week Kathleen Bradley enjoying LaMonte’s photo of her in Black is Beautiful with Chris Murray and Jayne Kennedy.

 

An outtake from Lynette Roddy‘s “Beauty of the Week” feature. Photo by LaMonte McLemore.

 

Le Roy Graham chatting with Sylvia Flanagan while his wife, Linda, talks with Carlotta Hester.

 

Chris Murray with Sonny Porter, founder and president of Future Agency and Production Company.

 

Chris Murray with LaMonte’s daughter and JET Beauty of the Week, Ciara McLemore.

 

Ciara McLemore and her mother, Lisa Starnes, wearing the same bathing suit in JET’s Beauty of the Week.

 

Black is Beautiful.

 

Special thanks to Fabiola Castro at Govinda Gallery and Carlotta Hester for her photos.

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