Dear Readers:
Not since Dr. Ink stunned the media world with his mysterious persona has there been as sensational a debut as the one perpetrated by a brave new talent, Buff Bookman. His recent review of “The Arithmetic of Life and Death” has made all other online reviewers read like a minister’s wife at a Sunday school picnic.
Buff is rough, tough, and he’s got the stuff. So Dr. Ink is proud to present his protégé for another round of hangin’ and bangin’ with the big boys. Take it away, Buffster.
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Four biceps out of fiveThanks, Doc. Back atcha, bro. Today’s review is of a work Doc found in the bookstore of the Smithsonian museum of American history. It’s called “The Great Lost Photographs of Eddie Rocco.” Published by Kicks Books in 1997, it has a foreword and commentary by Miriam Linna. Buff bought it for $7.98. At that price he gives it four biceps out of five.
What first attracted Buff to this book was the image on the back cover, a photo of rock legend Roy Orbison holding a golf club on a practice green, dressed, as usual, in black and wearing those ferocious shades. The juxtaposition was mind-bending. And how’s this for promo text: “Oh my! All mayhem is upon us as Kicks Magazine swings forth with their luscious premier Rock n’ Roll Photo Album, a bulging portfolio of kaboomin’ Kicks faves snapped by the legendary Eddie Rocco, rovin’ rhythm Rolleimeister who swung with hipsters from the Treniers, Ruth Brown, Johnny Otis, Jackie Wilson, Jan & Dean, Dion, and Roy Orbison to the Byrds, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and the Yardbirds … plus of course, Kicks icon, Esquerita! Presented here for the first time, in luxurious duotone splendor, is a glorious glimpse of rockin’ Rocco’s best –- images as pounding as the sounds he snapped.” Wow.
After a brief career playing bit parts in movies, Eddie Rocco began a career as a Hollywood photographer, specializing in the rhythm and blues scene of the 1950s. Buff has rarely seen still photographs with the visual energy of a motion picture, but Rocco’s photos of The Treniers performing at Club Oasis in LA almost drags you onto the dance floor to jump and jive with those breathtaking performers.
The Treniers at Club Oasis.Eventually, Rocco’s work would come to the attention of Charlton Publications, a house that specialized in printing lyrics of popular music along with photos of the stars. Founded in 1931, Charlton produced a series of popular music magazines, “which provided beat-happy boppers of all ethnicities with information on R&B musicians, songwriters, and disc jockeys.”
Although Rocco’s photos of popular white bands in the 1960s may attract some fans, it is his earlier work capturing black artists that should be of special interest to journalists, especially those trying to understand the importance of diversity. In spite of its reputation for mass-producing pulp fiction and comic books, Charlton Publications, writes Miriam Linna, “has long gone unlauded for pioneering true racial integration in mass market magazines at a time when other teen periodicals remained safely segregated.”
Rocco was no Pat Boone, exploiting and whitewashing black creativity. Instead, he and his camera were telling the untold story of the evolution of black music beyond the borders of a black audience. A photograph of Dinah Washington shows the blues diva performing at the Oasis Club before a thoroughly integrated audience. It’s a startling image, almost utopian.
Dinah Washington at the Club Oasis.Why journalists would like this book:
• Eddie Rocco was clearly a white man with soul, a man thoroughly comfortable with people of another race, a photojournalist with a vision that saw beyond the narrow boundaries of ethnicity.
• Rocco’s work demonstrates the ways in which creative artists can present, even in marginal publications, truths that may be un-presentable in the mainstream press.
• Rocco, who helped discover blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield, shows how seemingly trivial content about popular culture can reveal profound truths about tolerance and community.
Buff out. See ya’. Wouldn’t want to be ya’.
