Guess What Photo is One Of LIFE Magazine Editors' Faves?
Over the past three years, the staff at LIFE.com has pored over tens of thousands of extraordinary LIFE pictures — including some of the most celebrated photographs ever made. Here, in an exercise that proved thrilling, humbling, satisfying, and exasperating all at once, each staffer selected five all-time favorites. Could we have expanded the list to 10, or 20, or 50 favorites? In a heartbeat. But for now, these will have to suffice.
Couple Jitterbugging in True Savoy Style
Gjon Mili/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Feb 01, 1949
Couple jitterbugging in true Savoy style among crowd dancing on ballroom floor during Natl. Urban League Guild annual ball at the Savoy Ballroom.
Drummer Gene Krupa performing at Gjon Mili’s studio. NYC, 1941
*Amazing* photographs from LIFE Magazine’s photo archives. Originally featured in the July 9th, 1941 article, “GENE KRUPA SHOWS HOW TO PLAY DRUM IN THESE FANTASTIC SOUND PICTURES.”
In these unusual shots Krupa illustrates some rudiments of drumming. They were taken by Gjon Mili’s multiple-exposure camera so you could follow the track of Krupa’s drumsticks whizzing through the air. But they are interesting also as impressionistic portraits of sound, suggesting the rhythmic pandemonium of a Krupa jam session.
….As a drum historian, he likes to tell how Napoleon Bonaparte was once defeated by Russians who were roused to a fighting frenzy by Cossack drummers. Says Krupa proudly, “I have Cossack blood myself.”
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4 Jan 2012, 10:00 am