Site icon journal-isms.com

A Sunday ‘Hotter than July’

richard

Originally published Sept. 11, 2022

Stories From a Photojournalist Who ‘Made it Sing’

Homepage photo: Bruce Talamon shows the Journal-isms Roundtable a photo of himself with Earth, Wind and Fire. (Credit: Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks)

Bruce Talamon sits next to a photograph he made of Chaka Khan in 1977 at the Los Angeles
Coliseum during the P-Funk Earth Tour. (Credit: Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

Stories From a Photojournalist Who ‘Made it Sing’

“I would like to think that I captured a visual history of R&B royalty,” photographer Bruce Talamon said, and when his seductive Journal-isms Roundtable presentation was done, one viewer said, “Bruce, the photos are incredible and your stories are even better.”

Editors tell young writers to “make it sing,” and Talamon showed that with the right subjects, honed skills and a musical connection, photographers can do that, too. Hard-nosed journalists filled the Zoom chat room with such comments as “These shots are incredible” “This is a great photo!” “I’m loving this!” “A front row seat to genius!” and “Truly MARVELOUS!!!”

Talamon went around the country in the 1970s photographing Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Bootsy Collins, Earth Wind and Fire, George Clinton, Labelle, Chaka Khan and other R&B and soul music stars of the time.

In 2018, Talamon collected the photos in a thick coffee table book, “Bruce W. Talamon Soul R&B Funk Photographs 1972 – 1982.“

Now he has an exhibit, “Hotter Than July,” at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which opened in July. 

Talamon gave us the photos and the stories behind them. He added his remembrances and images from Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign and some of the Black journalists on the trail.

Covering Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign in New Hampshire: From left, Sylvester Monroe of Newsweek, Keith Moore of the Daily News in New York; George Curry of the Chicago Tribune; Jack E. White of TIme and Kenneth Walker of ABC News. (Credit: Bruce Talamon)

We saw the bulletproof vests that few knew protected Jackson in public, laughed with recognition when we recognized veteran journalists George Curry, Sylvester Monroe, Kenneth Walker, Keith Moore and Jack E. White and heard about The New York Times’ Gerald Boyd and Newsweek’s Jacques Chenier, who were also covering the Jackson campaign. 

Same with the story of how Talamon was able to cover Jackson in the first place. The civil rights leader was a serious major-party presidential candidate, when, in those pre-Obama days, the significance of the candidacy didn’t compute with many news managers.  

“This was the first time you had — I mean, you had the boys on the bus, but the boys on the bus didn’t have us,” Talamon told the group, which met on the afternoon of Sunday, Aug 28 . “And all of a sudden, it was like, you could not cover a presidential campaign unless you had covered a presidential campaign.

“But you couldn’t get out there unless somebody said you were OK. And all of a sudden, the newspapers and the TV people said, ‘well, what are we going to do now?’ And they scrambled. . . . you know, it was a crazy time, and it was wonderful. And I know in my case, when I went in to see Arnold Drapkin,” legendary director of photography at Time magazine, “and he asked me what I wanted to do, and I’m trying to be low key, and I said, ‘I’d like to cover the 1984 Democratic primaries’, and he started laughing.

“He says, ‘too late. I’ve got guys outside my door fighting, having fistfights over who’s going to cover Alan Cranston,’ ” the Democratic senator from California. “And I said, ‘I don’t want to cover Alan Cranston. I’d like to cover Jesse Jackson.’ 

“Nobody wanted to cover Jesse Jackson because — drum roll — they knew that he was going to leave, or should have left, after Super Tuesday, and they would have been out of a job. As it turned out, it was a crusade and we went all the way to the convention.”

There was more to Talamon’s struggle.

The photographer was in Hollywood, shooting Pee-Wee Herman, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and others as they made their movies. He was that rare Black photographer on set, a circumstance he says still exists.

And when Talamon pitched the idea of a book of photos of reggae icon Bob Marley, 18 publishers rejected the idea and one wanted to use marijuana leaves to spell out his name on the cover.

“Soul R&B Funk Photographs 1972-1982,” the 375-page coffee-table book that is about to go into its third printing, was similarly a tough sell. While publishers had no problem producing picture books about white pop stars, no one had done anything comparable with Black ones.

The Journal-isms Roundtable took place by Zoom on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 28. Forty-nine people were on the call, with another 112 having watched on Facebook and YouTube as of Sept. 10. You can watch it above or on the YouTube site.

In addition, we toasted Yvette Cabrera, new president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, specializing in environmental justice, and Marquita Smith, who has been voted the Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship for the journalism educator who has done the most for diversity. Marquita, Ed.D., is assistant dean for graduate programs at the University of Mississippi. Some may know her from her days at Knight Ridder, McClatchy or Gannett.

This session was the second Roundtable centered on photography. In February, the topic was photojournalists of color, co-sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association. More on that later.

Talamon’s concerns about the lack of diversity among movie-set crews are shared by his union, Cinematographer’s Guild Local 600 (I.A.T.S.E.).  Xiomara Comrie, a business representative for the Guild, described for Journal-isms a tight-knit club of freelancers who hold those jobs, saying, “people are very happy and comfortable to work with who they want to work with.”


Talamon told us, “There are so many African American filmmakers and so many who don’t know that Black still photographers exist. Who say, ‘we didn’t know there were any Black still photographers,’ and it pisses me off, quite frankly. And it’s hard to change that. I used to tell folks when I would walk on the set that the only thing that were Black were me and my camera.”

In the post-George Floyd era, the I.A.T.S.E. won diversity pledges from the studios, but after contract negotiations last October, the union said only that “The agreement also includes unspecified diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and adding Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a holiday,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Since the rejections of the Marley book idea that in 2005 became “Spirit Dancer,” there has been movement in the publishing industry. When Dana Canedy stepped down in July as the first Black woman to serve as publisher of Simon & Schuster’s flagship imprint, Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter reported for The New York Times, “The announcement came amid an industrywide push to increase diversity. Several major publishing houses have over the past two years hired and promoted people of color into prominent editorial roles, including Lisa Lucas, the first Black publisher in Pantheon’s 80-year history, and Jamia Wilson, vice president and executive editor at Random House.” 

At the Roundtable, the emphasis was on photos and stories.

Alberta Gay told Bruce Talamon, ” ‘Darling, you can take your pictures, but you have to sit down and break some bread with us.’” Frankie Gaye is at left; Marvin Gaye at right. (Credit: Bruce Talamon)

Stories such as when Talamon accompanied candidate Jackson when he had dinner after a sleepover at the home of a family on the campaign trail, or when Marvin Gaye’s mother, Alberta, made supper for Marvin and his brother, Frankie, whose observations after returning from the Vietnam war inspired Marvin’s classic 1971 album “What’s Going On.”

“I spent nine days with him, and this was on his ranch,” Talamon said as he showed an image of Marvin. “And, he was a rock star. Let us be clear. He did live that rock star life. 

“He was extremely generous — there he is driving his Rolls.

“On his way to his mother’s house. He said we gotta have lunch and the best place to have lunch is — I know a place. I’ll just tell you, there’s nothing better than day-after leftover Thanksgivng dinner. Mrs. Gay was so happy to see us because her boys were home. That’s Frankie on the left, and Marvin, and she set a place for me. She said, ‘Darling, you can take your pictures, but you have to sit down and break some bread with us.’ And she had the same overcooked green beans like my mother, and the Wonder bread, and it was fabulous. . . . but it’s also sad, because this was the house that his father killed him in in 1984. We found out about it when we were on the road with Jesse.”

— Shots of audiences mesmerized by Michael Jackson and his brothers in the Jackson Five: “Before Michael Jackson conquered the world, he belonged to little Black girls, and folks need to know that.”

When Ebony magazine asked Donna Summer whether she had a photographer that she would like to shoot with, she said “yes, Bruce Talamon,” the photographer recalled. He said he purposefully cropped out the heads of the men in the background. (Credit: Bruce Talamon)

— When Donna Summer was so impressed with Talamon’s session with her that she asked for him again, and provided his first national magazine cover photo. “They told her we would have 20 minutes. The shoot was set for 3:00 p.m. Donna showed up early. She saw our setup and stayed 4 hours. Months later, she requested us for her Ebony cover,” he explained later on Twitter.

— Up all night with Wonder and friends celebrating his birthday. The title of Talamon’s exhibit comes from Wonder’s 1980 album.

— The importance of the newspaper Soul, which “started in 1966 after the Watts rebellion,” and continued weekly, then every two weeks, until 1982. 

Talamon was introduced to publisher Regina Jones by Howard L. Bingham, “whom some of you may know as Muhammad Ali’s photographer in Life magazine. . . . She gave Leonard Pitts,” the syndicated Miami Herald columnist who participated in the Roundtable, and Bruce Talamon some of their early jobs.”

Parliament-Funkadelic at the Los Angeles Sports Arena in 1977. “You have never lived until you’ve tried to wrestle 13 people onto a 10-foot backdrop when they’re high,” Bruce Talamon said. (Credit: Bruce Talamon)

— Filming the 1977 P-Funk Earth Tour, with Clinton, Khan, Collins, Rick James and others. Of Parliament-Funkadelic, Talamon explained to the Roundtable, “I will just say to aspiring photographers and others, you have never lived until you’ve tried to wrestle 13 people onto a 10-foot backdrop when they’re high.”

— Telling the studio that presented the 1989 film “Harlem Nights,” with Eddie Murphy, Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor, that Foxx had to be included in the shot they wanted of Murphy and Pryor, which framed three generations of Black comedic history. Talamon’s judgment prevailed.

— The story behind a photograph of Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire, who became a friend he called ” ‘Reese,” walking toward the pyramids of Giza.

“And it became his favorite, and when he died, this went all over the world.”

Along the way, there were tips a photographer learns, and others that apply to all creative people.

“You’ve gotta stand up for yourself. I don’t mean to belabor the point, but I learned that from Sylvester Stallone. I was working on a movie with him, and I said something wiseass. . . . He says, ‘Bruce, I used to leave the driving to somebody else. But when your name is on it, you’re responsible for it.’

“One thing I would say to young or mid-career photographers to think about. You know, to get the knowledge because . . . it is crazy out there and it is treacherous.”

‘They’ll Just Throw You in Jail’

Exit mobile version