A strange gathering of musicians for a concert

When I photographed Buffy Sainte-Marie in San Francisco in 1970, it was one of the most unusual gathering of performers I can recall. I shot the concert for rock promoter Bill Graham. (More about my relationship with him here.)

In addition to Buffy, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and B.J. Thomas were on the ticket!

Berry, the father of rock & roll, was playing hard rock, with the only five chords he knew on his guitar, named Lucille.

Diddley was playing with his loud night-club rock style.

Buffy softly sang solo, occasionally playing her only instrument, a Native American one-string mouth hard.

And Thomas sang his gentle show-tune music.

To hear Chuck Berry  belting out "Roll Over Beethoven" while doing his famous "chicken walk," followed by B.J. Thomas singing "Rain Drops Keep Fallin' On My Head" with the barroom ballads by Diddley (check out this song) and the soft singing of Buffy Sainte-Marie (here's "Circle Game," which charted in 1970) was an interesting concept to say the least.

You can purchase this photograph at my online store.

Bob Dylan: "Friends call me Zimmy"

I photographed Bob Dylan for The Friends of Traditional Music at Centennial Hall in Tucson in the mid-'80s.

Dylan was in his Christian phase and performed with three black women who were gospel singers.

Born in 1941, he changed his name from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Bob Dylan in 1959 while living and performing folk music in the Dinkeytown district of Minneapolis at the Ten O'Clock Scholar coffeehouse. The name change was to honor the poet Dylan Thomas, who, he said, had affected the writing of his music. Thomas was a Welsh poet (writing exclusively in English) who made four tours of America between 1950 and 1953.

At first, Bob Dylan was into rock & roll, but changed to folk music because he said that rock might have great rhythms, driving pulses and catch-phrases, but it didn't reflect life in a realistic way like folk music.

He not only changed his name from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Bob Dylan reflecting how the poet Dylan Thomas affected the writing of his music, but he also changed his home. With Ramblin' Jack Elliott as a performing partner, Dylan left Dinkytown for New York City in 1969, hoping to meet his music idol Woody Guthrie.

As with most performers I've photographed, when you meet them they're working and aren't up for much chatter. I only talked to Dylan for a few seconds backstage during intermission. As he was walking offstage past me I simply said "Good show, Bob." His response was "Don't call me Bob. Friends call me Zimmy."

You can purchase a copy of Zimmy at my web store.

My opportunity to photograph THE photographer

The first time I met Ansel Adams (about 1968), I didn't even know who he was. 

At the end of Ocean Avenue in Carmel, California is a beautiful beach. I had just purchased a 200mm lens for my Hasselblad 120 camera and went down there to see if anything interesting was going on. 

Because there is an annual contest there I thought I might find someone building a sand castle that I might photograph. No sand castles were being constructed, but slightly off-shore I spotted a wine bottle stuck in the sand, with waves gently flowing over it. 

A perfect test, I thought, for this medium telephoto lens. Had my Hasselblad on a tripod and had taken a couple of shots when this older man came up to me and asked, "I was watching you and noticed that you were taking photographs of that wine bottle as the waves rolled in over it. 

"Do you think possibly a better photograph might be with the bottle just there by itself with no water crashing over it?"

I asked him if he lived around Carmel and if so, and if he gave me his address, I'd do a shot or two the way he suggested, and the next time was down I'd look him up and show him the photos and see which we thought was better. 

He wrote on a piece of paper: A. Adams, 1 Van Ess Way, Carmel Highlandsm and also wrote down his telephone number. So a few weeks later I was back in town, having lunch at The Tuck Box, and gave him a call. 

It was the best of concerts, it was the worst

Because I was in the Air Force, I was stationed in a building and not on a base (The United States Air Force Satellite Test Center in Sunnyvale, California), so there was no housing.

Airmen had to live in the nearby communities. I split rent with a folk singing group named "Larry, Judy & Tom Tom". My military service was more like a standard job, working 5 days a week from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Came home one afternoon and Larry Bishop asked if I would like to meet Peter, Paul & Mary that night. They were performing just south in San Jose.

"Sure, I said, but what do you mean 'meet' Peter, Paul & Mary instead of 'see' them perform or photograph them?"

"Mary Travers and I are were lovers from way back when I lived in Hawaii and even though eventually we split up, we've remained friends. She's invited me to come see them tonight and bring as many friends as I want."

I remember the exact date of the PP&M concert, June 5, 1968, well because towards the end of that concert Mary Travers brought their singing to a halt to announce that Sen. Robert Kennedy, then a presidential candidate, had just been shot in a hotel kitchen in Los Angeles.

This photograph of Peter, Paul and Mary is from two negatives printed at the same time, one lying on top of the other.

One image is a front view clearly showing all three and the second I took onstage with my camera stuck between where the curtains joined, showing just a white outline of their bodies as if it was a white pen and ink drawing on a black background.

You can acquire a copy of this photo, in any of a variety of formats, at my store.
                     

When Ricky Nelson came to my garden party

Nothing like coming home and finding Ricky Nelson sitting in your living room!

When I was serving in the military back in 1972, I lived off base (because technically there was no base, just a building) I came home from duty one afternoon to find Rick Nelson sitting in my living room strumming his guitar.

"Oh, hi," I said. "How are you?" I introduced myself and asked, "What brings you here?" Seemed like a reasonable questions.

He explained that my roommates, Larry Bishop, Judy Whitaker and Tom Berndt (known as Larry, Judy and Tom Tom) "will be opening the show for me tonight at Zac's over on the El Camino Real. Just came by for a break before we go back and get set up."

So I took advantage of this highly unusual moment (it's only in the movies that you'd come home and find a rock star just sitting and strumming in your living room), and said to him: "If you have the time, we could quickly run over to a field behind Stanford University and I'll bet in these sunset hours we could get some interesting photographs."

Surprisingly, he quickly agreed, grabbed his guitar, put it in the case and we jumped into my old 1966 Dodge van and set off from my home in Old Menlo Park to Stanford.

Driving there on the pretty busy Camino Real, every once in a while Nelson would crouch down and ask me if I could speed up or slow down because he thought someone in a nearby car recognized him. I'd do it, but asked him: "I mean, Rick, you've been on television all your life and you're a world-famous singer. How can you expect anonymity? Wouldn't that be a failure if you were?"

I received no reply.

"Louisiana Man" Doug Kershaw is one crazy fiddler

Known for his most famous song, "Louisiana Man," Doug Kershaw is considered the Crazy Cajun fiddle player.

I photographed him in Denver in 1967. By that year, he had sold over 18 million records and the way he played made him a favorite to team up with by many hot rock-and-roll tars of the era.

In 1969 his "Louisiana Man" was beamed back to Earth from the Apollo 12 lunar mission. In 1970, his fiddle made itself heard in Arlo Guthrie's recording of "Alice's Restaurant."

Backstage in Denver, on Jan. 24, 1967, Kershaw and I celebrated our mutual birthdays (he was born a few years earlier, in 1936) at a party after his concert.

He told me that because of his vigorous assault on a fiddle (as can be seen in my photography) he usually went through six bows during every concert.

When I asked him what the different was between a fiddle and a violin, Kershaw replied: "About $10,000!"

For far less than that, you can own this photograph in your choice of sizes and papers.

 

Playing poker with John Lennon

While living with my grandparents in Indianapolis, I really got into photography. What I could do with my plastic Kodak Brownie Hawkeye (which I still have, by the way) was pretty limimted, so Grandma Nina bought me my first really 35 mm camera, a Pentax Spotmatic, with two lenses.

My grandparents owned the Mecca Club, a private nightclub that also served dinners. One night I was introduced to the owner of WISH-FM radio station. Even though I had been shooting photos with my new camera for less than two months, Grandma Nina had told him what a fine photographer I had become.

Paul McCartney (left) and John Lennon
 at Detroit performance, Aug. 13, 1966.

One of the station's DJs was to be going to Chicago where he would meet the Beatles at the International Amphitheatre, adjacent to the Union Stockyards, where they were opening their third (and last) American tour. He paid me to fly there to photography this DJ with the band, but the DJ never showed.

The Beatles' manager told me that this was too bad, but then asked why didn't I just come with them for a few days and do photography of the Beatles performing. Who could turn down an offer like that?

Off to Detroit

I went with them from Chicago to Detroit (where the photo was taken, Aug. 13, 1966, at Redwing Stadium) and Cleveland, shooting 15 rolls of black-and-white and color slide film. I kept two rolls for myself and for what was an incredible amount of money for an 18 year old at the time, was paid $50 a roll for the 13 rolls I sold them.

It would have been incredible, had I ever seen the money.

Janis Joplin's last concert in San Francisco

Because of a relationship I had developed with rock music promoter Bill Graham (born Wolodia Grajonca; no extra charge for that trivia), I was asked (sort of) to photograph Janis Joplin.

I met Graham while standing in line at the Fillmore West in SF, a venue made famous by Graham. A man who was handing out fliers for upcoming concerts asked me why I had a camera with me since photography of concerts was not allowed. The man turned out to be Graham.

I told him, "Look, I don't use a flash because I know that can upset some performers and ifyou allow me to do photography, I'll send you copies of what I feel are my best photographs and you can use them for whatever you want."

He approved the idea and allowed me to bring my camera when I came up to concerts in San Francisco at the Fillmore West,  or at the Winterland Ballroom, which Graham rented for larger concerts.

I took this photo of Janis Joplin (1943-1961) at the Winterland on Oct. 5, 1969. It would be her last San Francisco concert. Although she had several concerts in other cities before she went to Los Angeles, where she would die the following year. (She died just 16 days before Jimi Hendrix. Both were 27.)

I feel this photograph really captures the strength and energy that she had while on stage.

You can buy a copy of this photography at my store at Fine Art America.
 

Richard Byrd, Photographer, is going online!

Since 1966 -- almost 50 years now -- I have been taking photographs. They have hung in galleries, in my own shops, in many homes around Bisbee and elsewhere. The have been in newspapers, magazines, books and other media.

It has been my great pleasure to share many of these images -- and the stories behind them -- with friends old and new over the years, often one-on-one.

Image from Gary Dillard's iPhone

But now we are in a new era, one of worldwide connectedness, and I must adapt.

Thus, my images are going online. I have selected Fine Art America to display my photos. I will be posting another photo each week, starting with a selection of my work involving rock-and-roll artists. Each photo will include some basic information about the photo, but it will be here, in this blog, that I will tell the complete story of the image. (Or at least as much as I can remember after half a century and a knock in the head.)

I've also set up a Facebook page to allow you to easily keep track of my photos, though I'm told that only about 10% of you will see any given Facebook post. So please bookmark this page and come back frequently to learn more about the photos. Invite your friends to like my Facebook page and to visit this blog and the Fine Art America site.

And, as most of you who know me will understand that I'm not very good at this, feel free to purchase my photos through the site. Because of health and technology issues, it's not easy for me to print new photos these days, but the digital world has improved its quality so much that images coming from the online site are of amazing quality.

They also can offer a variety of sizes, papers (or canvas or metal) and matting/mounting options that are difficult for me.

But most of all, enjoy the images and leave your comments. Or chase me down and talk with me about them. And I'll be happy to sign any image that you purchase.