Sylvia Roberti "Birds in a Border" Outsider Art collection Jim Linderman
Outsider art Folk art Baseball Greats Collection Jim Linderman
Lonnie Simmons The African-American Musician and Photographer who never slept
Samuel "Lonnie" Simmons is an Unsung Hero of Photography, so let's bring another great African-American artist out of the dust of obscurity. Once known as "The Man Who Never Sleeps" Samuel "Lonnie" Simmons was an African-American jazzman (more than anything else) in his younger days playing with no less than American treasures Fats Waller, Hot Lips Page, Chick Webb and more. Many more. He recorded under his own name as well, including "I Can't Get Started" on the Parrot label (in which he played both organ and saxophone, probably at the same time.) If you are not yet impressed with Lonnie's musical chops, his Jet Magazine obit reports he also played with Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie. Parrot was a label which lasted only three years in the early 1950s, but some of the recordings were reissued later on Chess Records.
A photographer too? I'm getting a little tired of finding great talented people no one taught me about in school.
So Lonnie, or Samuel, is called "a free-lance photographer" in passing in the few places you might find information about him.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina (Actually, in Mt. Pleasant, an isolated pocket in the low-country coast and a plantation-era place near where slaves landed. A bridge to Mount Pleasant was built in 1928.
Lonnie's father was a blacksmith who went back nearly to slave days, passing at the age of 82 in 1955. Lonnie's father was just one notable blacksmith named Simmons from the Charleston area. On his father's passing, Lonnie went back to Mt. Pleasant to bring his mother back to Chicago with him, and it was her first plane airplane ride. His appearance at the funeral was notable enough for the local paper to interview him, where Simmons is reported to have "gradually drifted into take pictures for newspapers and magazines" and that he maintains his own darkroom in his Chicago home. The headline reads "Mt. Pleasant Negro Musician Becomes Press Photographer" and adds a few more musical giants among his playing partners.
It was not unusual for Mr. Simmons to leap from the bandstand with his camera to capture events, including crimes. A one-man forerunner of the surveillance camera, his pictures were used by the Chicago Police for evidence and he earned honorary membership in the Chicago Patrolman's Association. Much of his photography was taken at the legendary Chicago Club De Lisa and I now believe the photograph below was taken by Mr. Simmons in his "spare time" as picture maker who roamed the club supporting his income with snapshots.
Somebody has some, as Mr. Simmon's photographs were apparently used in the 1995 documentary PROMISED LAND narrated by Morgan Freeman for the History Channel, which while acclaimed was forgotten. You can read about it in web comments where people keep asking why it isn't available on DVD…one of whom writes "It is a shame that this great work of truth has been overlooked." Par for the course. The documentary is about the migration of southern African-Americans to Chicago. Lonnie Simmons was one of them, and fortunately he brought his camera.
PHOTOGRAPH OF SAMUEL LONNIE SIMMONS Charleston Jazz Initiative Archives
PARROT RECORD LABEL HERE
Original Club DeLisa Photograph and Sleeve collection Jim Linderman
JIM LINDERMAN BOOKS AND AFFORDABLE EBOOKS ARE AVAILABLE HERE ON BLURB
Dan Burley : An African-American popular culture hero
OBIT OF DAN BURLEY FROM JET MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 8, 1962 SADLY OMITS DUKE MAGAZINE
Dan Burley is the most famous folk you never heard of. Why? Because he was an African-American man. Sorry, but that's just the way it was. (Is?) If you did a six degrees of separation chart for Dan Burley, it would include everyone of any importance in the music and publishing world, but yet again I'll ask. Do you know who Dan Burley was?
Well, let's see...He appeared in films with Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. He wrote music for Cab Calloway. In fact, one can trace his own piano playing right to the Beatles song Lady Madonna. Are you humming that piano run in your head yet? Thank Dan Burley.
Some people can do more than play. Burley was editor of Ebony Magazine way back in the 1930s. He married the first African-American woman to sing in Madison Square Garden. He invented the word Bebop, reportedly, and also created the Harlem Handbook of Jive. I mean, get HEP!
During World War Two, the USO show he organized was the black version of Bob Hope's entertainment for the troops.
He wrote for Elijah Muhammad.
He helped create Jet Magazine
He was personal friends with Ed Sullivan. NO ONE was friends with Ed Sullivan!
He had a radio show. No, he had TWO radio shows.
More importantly for our purposes here...Dan Burley published a GIRLY MAGAZINE!
He published the first serious African-American Men's magazine with sisters posing! DUKE! 1957. That's right...A skin mag with class and Beautiful Black Babes (Not to mention the writing of Chester Himes.) It was a high-fashion lifestyle magazine for the African-American man, a Playboy magazine for the Hood! As such, it SHOULD end my ten-part series on the African-American pin up and should also goose a real writer into a serious biography.
If you search Dan Burley, you'll find him identified as a sports writer. A Journalist. A Jazz Musician. A Poet. And yet he only lived 54 years. His Wiki Biography (which also omits his smut magazine) is HERE
Unfortunately, Duke Magazine lived for only six issues.
There's a few other interesting stories I'm leaving out...but it seems like a pretty high life.