"Every Minute Counts"--The Legacy of Katherine Joseph

Garment Workers on the Home Front. Photograph by Katherine Joseph, ca. 1942. © Richard Hertzberg and Suzanne Hertzberg. Katherine Joseph Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Photography was a vibrant and exciting part of her life. Though she ended her career for marriage and motherhood, her work demonstrates an assertive and enterprising personality. She was a determined professional in a field that few women entered. She stood near such luminaries as President Franklin Roosevelt, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frank Sinatra, but also spent considerable time in factories where members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) worked. She practiced her craft with simple equipment, yet produced results that convey strength, dignity, and respect. Until a few years ago nobody knew anything about her achievements, particularly those closest to her, her children.

Who was she? This was forgotten photojournalist Katherine Joseph. You haven’t heard of her career as an intrepid, enterprising female photographer during the 1930s and 1940s, based mainly in New York City--certainly not after World War II, when she was already married to electrical engineer Arthur Hertzberg and had put her venerable Rolleiflex camera into a closet and taken on the role of spouse and mother. From that point on she never picked up a camera again and did not discuss her premarital photographic adventures with anyone.

Katherine Joseph near her darkroom. © Richard Hertzberg and Suzanne Hertzberg. Katherine Joseph Papers, 1938-1944, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. 

So it is both fitting and ironic that her children, Richard and Suzanne Hertzberg, are responsible for discovering and disclosing Katherine Joseph’s photographic legacy. Several years after her death in 1990 hundreds of negatives, photographs, notes, diaries, and journal entries were found in the family home’s attic by her daughter. Those dusty boxes contained the remnants of Katherine Joseph’s secret life.

Recognizing the value of this archive, Richard and Suzanne Hertzberg donated it to the National Museum of American History in 2007. Richard found an intriguing family connection with his own passion for photography. It had remained a mystery, since there was no explicit communication about photography between mother and son--although in the mid–1960s Ms. Joseph handed over to Richard an old Rolleiflex square-format camera, with no background about its history. When he visited the Smithsonian in 2014 to see the complete Katherine Joseph collection, he found many 2 ¼" by 2 ¼" negatives that were clearly taken with the same Rolleiflex his mother had passed on to him, and which he had used to take his first photographs.

Richard also became convinced that a fitting tribute to his mother’s photography would be an exhibition, and he submitted a proposal to the Oregon Jewish Museum / Center for Holocaust Education (OJM / CHE) in Portland, Oregon (he lives in one of the city’s suburbs). OJM / CHE’s Executive Director, Judy Margles, along with the institution’s staff and Exhibition Committee, were enthusiastically supportive. Judy accompanied Richard on his second visit to view the Joseph collection in 2015 and, upon seeing firsthand the material, was even more committed to an exhibit. The two met with National Museum of American History staff, Rosemary Phillips, Cathy Keen, and David Haberstich, to discuss cooperating in making the exhibit, Every Minute Counts - Photographs by Katherine Joseph, happen. Kay Peterson was very helpful from the outset, and Joe Hursey created high–quality TIFF digital images that were used to make new prints for the exhibit. It opened on June 29 and runs to September 25.

Katherine Joseph was born in Odessa, Ukraine in the early 20th century, the youngest of five children. The family immigrated to the United States when she was a baby, and her early years were spent in El Paso and Chicago. Katherine had an independent character; free from “Old World” cultural constraints, she moved to New York City to practice photography. She secured a position with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) that enabled her to document the garment industry labor force before and during World War II. The relationship between worker, machine, and urban/industrial environment was a prominent theme in many of her Union photographs.

The ILGWU was a strong advocate of improving working conditions and promoting employment for all Americans regardless of gender or ethnicity. As such it attracted political attention. Ms. Joseph’s photographic portfolio includes candid views of President Franklin Roosevelt, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, a very young Frank Sinatra, and the colorful New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. One memorable photo of President Roosevelt showed him surrounded by members of the cast from the Union production of “Pins and Needles” when the show was staged for the President at the White House on March 3, 1938.

Girls sewing, Mexico, 1941. Photograph by Katherine Joseph.  © Richard Hertzberg and Suzanne Hertzberg. Katherine Joseph Papers, 1938-1944, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. 

Katherine Joseph’s photographic career also took her far from the garment factories of New York City. In January 1941 she and two friends from Chicago embarked on an expedition to Mexico in an “Americar” manufactured by the Willys–Overland Motor Company. The firm wanted to demonstrate the rugged nature of the car as part of a public relations and advertising campaign. Ms. Joseph was to provide visual proof of the car’s durability through her photographs as it was driven over Mexican roads, paved and unpaved. Her photographs also displayed the dignity of poor farmers, the vibrancy of street markets, and the country’s varied geography.

Market Day: A Family Affair, Tamazunchale, Mexico, 1941. Photograph by Katherine Joseph.  © Richard Hertzberg and Suzanne Hertzberg. Katherine Joseph Papers, 1938-1944,  Archives Center, National Museum of American History. 

The journey took the adventuresome trio through much of northern, central, and coastal Mexico. Representing themselves as members of “la prensa” (the press), Ms. Joseph and her companions gained access to people, places, and experiences well beyond a conventional tourist itinerary. This included Germans who had established business and financial operations in Mexico and were either outright Nazis or Nazi sympathizers; William Randolph Hearst dining with Marion Davies; gold and silver mines in the Sierra Madre Mountains; the earthquake and volcanic eruption in Colima, April 15, 1941; travel by horse and burro to remote areas; accommodations ranging from the utterly primitive to luxurious. When Hollywood celebrities visited the American Embassy for a “good will” social event with Mexican government officials on April 12, 1941, Ms. Joseph was there. Her camera captured Wallace Beery, Joe E. Brown, Mickey Rooney, Norma Shearer, and Johnny Weissmuller.

Goodwill Fiesta Farewell Gala: Norma Shearer and Mickey Rooney, Mexico City, 1941. Photograph by Katherine Joseph.
© Richard Hertzberg and Suzanne Hertzberg. Katherine Joseph Papers, 1938-1944, 
Archives Center, National Museum of American History. 

The date and circumstances of Katherine Joseph’s departure from Mexico are obscure. However, by August 1941 at the age of 27 she was back in New York City, again working for the ILGWU. Her photographs reveal the ILGWU labor force on the home front serving the war effort. As World War II ended, Ms. Joseph married and started a family. This became her priority and the camera was set aside.

Whether she was in a Manhattan garment workshop or a Mexican town, Katherine Joseph’s photographs display a profound respect for the fundamental dignity of the people she brought into focus, regardless of their circumstances or position in life. At the same time she was very aware of those circumstances and they became part of the subject matter, serving literally as a compositional frame or stage for the individual lives she presented in her photographs.

Earthquake damage to buildings and street, Colima, Mexico, April 16, 1941. Photograph by Katherine Joseph.  © Richard Hertzberg and Suzanne Hertzberg. Katherine Joseph Papers, 1938-1944. Archives Center, National Museum of American History. 

In reviewing the Katherine Joseph exhibit at the OJM / CHE--the first public display of her work-- Bob Hicks of Oregon Arts Watch wrote the following:

"Her photography in the 1930s and 1940s slides her neatly into a category of humanistic documentarists that also includes the likes of Dorothea Lange…and Margaret Bourke-White…The images range from the factory floor to the White House…and capture the lives of hourly workers and giants of the entertainment and political worlds. The images in the exhibit are all shot in black and white, lending the work a sense of historical veracity, and are compellingly framed, with the vital trait that excellent news and documentary photographers share of freezing telling moments in intimate and lively circumstances…"

For more information about Katherine Joseph and her exhibit at the Oregon Jewish Museum, visit their website: http://www.ojmche.org/.

Richard Hertzberg and David Haberstich
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Failed Invention? Go Figure!

Manikin parts, circa 1930s

True story: not all inventions succeed. We tend to hear about and celebrate the inventions that change and advance the ways in which we live and experience the world. We don’t always know and talk about failed inventions, but looking at inventions that didn’t work is an important aspect of documenting the invention process. Understanding the failure as well as the contributing factors is just as important as determining why inventions succeed. Numerous issues, including the lack of access to manufacturing support, capital, raw materials and/or supplies, markets, in addition to poor timing, can lead to the demise of an invention. 

Articulated skeletal manikin and girl figure, circa 1930s

One example of a failed invention is a mannequin or “manikin” created by Landy Hales (1889-1972), an artist-inventor who was a master at using mechanical displays in department store windows. Hales patented a manikin (US Patent 2,129,421) and founded Hales Manikins, Inc. in 1941 to manufacture and sell them. The manikin was an articulated (jointed skeleton), child-size figure with a flexible outer covering of sponge rubber or elastic. As seen from these images, the manikin, assembled and disassembled, was extremely complicated. Hales built these small prototypes as an effective way to learn about what would and wouldn’t work and to determine if the manikin could achieve/perform the intended motion. Hales’s papers contain the records of his effort to patent, manufacture and sell manikins. The documents reveal through sketches, patents, photographs, correspondence, and the minutes of the Board of Directors for Hales Manikins, Inc. the processes he undertook. The visual documentation provides good evidence of Hales’s prototyping efforts to create a workable model.

USPatent 2,129,421 for manikin and method of making the same, September 6, 1938

Hales was unable to manufacture and bring to market his manikin. Even after extensive research, experimenting, and construction of models, patterns and forms, a workable model for the display market was never produced. Hales’s financial backers, Monford Trillett and Mackubin, and Legg & Company, were not willing to spend more money on the venture and Hales Manikins, Inc. was dissolved in 1948. Hales Manikins, Inc. was one of many creative ventures Hales pursued in his lifetime. His layered posters and window displays for Macy’s are recognizable and well documented. To learn more about Hales's inventive life, visit the Archives Center and the Landy Hales Papers.

Blueprint of drawing for skeleton framework for child manikin, circa 1930s

Alison Oswald, Archivist
Archives Center, NMAH

Spooked in the Stacks

Child with Jack-o-lantern [photoprint]. From J. Horace McFarland Collection, Archives of American Gardens.

True story: archives aren't as creepy in real life as they are in movies. There aren't cobwebs hanging from the shelves, and no dust clouds blown off crumbling books stacked haphazardly atop one another. They aren't lit by archaic lanterns or candles and there usually isn't anyone in a tattered and hooded black robe behind the desk.

But that doesn't mean we can't find some spooky materials in our (un-cobwebbed) boxes. Today, we celebrate the creepy (and cute!) items in our collections with a Halloween scrapbook, put together by the archivists and librarians from around the Smithsonian. Take a looooooooooooook!

[Funerary floral arrangement] [stereograph]: "Skeleton Leaves." Historic Gardens Stereograph Collection, Archives of American Gardens

WWI soldier facial reconstruction casts and masks, ca. 1918, Anna Coleman Ladd Papers, ca. 1881-1950, Archives of American Art

Sandy Low and Happy Horrigan with the "ghost" of Charles Mahoney, 1925. Charles Mahoney collection of photographs of students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, ca. 1925, Archives of American Art

Scene from a Theatrical or Film Performance [graphic]. Myron Bement Smith Collection: Antoin Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives.

Miss Duckett[Her classroom and students; from envelope] [acetate film photonegative,] 1947 November. Scurlock Studio Records, 1905-1994, National Museum of American History. 

 

“Cobweb House” by Charles Burchfield (1954).

Walter Rosenblum Collection, Photograph Archives, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Informal portrait of Charles Nungesser, French WWI ace, standing beside his Nieuport XXIII.  NASM A-48746-A. National Air and Space Museum Archives.

 

The "coeur noire" ("black heart") was the personal insignia of French WWI ace Charles Nungesser.  NASM A-32949-A. National Air and Space Museum Archives.

Happy Halloween!

Cecilia Peterson, Project Archivist

Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections



George Peter Alexander Healy (1813–1894), Cosmopolitan Artist

Self-Portrait by George Peter Alexander Healy, not dated,
oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C. (NPG.70.17)

The theme for American Archives Month is True Story, which fits well with the life of George Peter Alexander Healy, who was a leading nineteenth- century portrait and historical painter in America and Europe. Born in Boston, he developed an early talent for art and received support from such portraitists as Jane Stuart and Thomas Sully. In 1834, Healy departed for Paris to continue his studies with the French artists Antoine-Jean Gros and Thomas Couture. By the mid-1840s, he established public recognition by exhibiting at the Paris salons, and winning awards and patronage of important American and European leaders.

From 1840 to 1848, King Louis-Philippe of France commissioned Healy to create a portrait series of royalty and European and American statesmen for the historical collection at the Château de Versailles. Healy’s portrait series for Versailles was a combination of his original works and copies after earlier masters of more than forty historical figures, such as Elizabeth I, George III, and Charlotte Sophia of England, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones, Horatio Nelson, William Pitt, and Daniel Webster. It was a great opportunity for the artist, who gained permission to copy the original portraits at Windsor Castle under the approval of Queen Victoria. This experience provided Healy an invaluable study of portraits by great masters such as Thomas Gainsborough, Thomas Lawrence, and Joshua Reynolds. He returned to America to portray Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay from life sittings for this series. At first Jackson resisted, but he was eventually won over by the young artist’s mission. Healy completed this last memorable portrait of Jackson shortly before the former president died in 1845. Although Louis-Philippe was deposed in the 1848 revolution, the French government kept Healy’s portrait series at Versailles as originally planned. On a 1994 visit, I had the privilege of reviewing the Healy portrait collection for the Catalog of American Portraits survey at the Musée National du Château de Versailles.



Abraham Lincoln by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1887,
oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (NPG.65.50)

In 1851, Healy completed his most ambitious history painting, entitled Webster Replying to Senator Hayne, which featured130 individuals at the 1830 congressional debate about the constitutional nature of the Union. In 1855, he won a gold medal at the Paris Universal Exposition for his painting Franklin Urging the Claims of the American Colonies before Louis XVI. In 1857, the United States Congress authorized the commissioning of Healy to create a series of presidential portraits for the White House. The artist portrayed American statesman and military leaders as well as presidents, including James Madison, John Jay, John Marshall, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James Knox Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman.

William Tecumseh Sherman by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1866,
oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (NPG.65.40)

Healy was an engaging, talented artist who easily mixed with all levels of society and prominent leaders in America and abroad. Traveling extensively for work, he crossed the Atlantic more than thirty times and lived in London, Paris, Rome, and Chicago. Healy’s success was due to his ability to capture an individual’s likeness and personality. He also experimented with lighting, artistic techniques, and new materials for his paintings. Healy was a prolific artist who created about hundred portraits a year during the height of his career. Unfortunately, many of his artworks were lost in the 1871 Chicago fire. His portraits are currently held in numerous public collections, including the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the White House, Washington, D.C.; the Chicago History Museum; the Virginia Historical Society, Richmond; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Historical Society; and the Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans. He was the first American artist to be honored by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence to present his own portrait to its celebrated self-portrait collection. Healy’s international influence paved the way for later generations of American artists such as John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase, who are also included in the Uffizi’s self-portrait collection.

In 1966, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery founded the Catalog of American Portraits (CAP), a national portrait archive of historically notable subjects and artists from the colonial period to current times. The public is welcome to access the online portrait search program from the museum website of over 100,000 records. The CAP program can be reviewed here.

Patricia H. Svoboda, Research Coordinator
Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution


Websites:
George Peter Alexander Healy portrait collection, Musée National du Château de Versailles, France

Franklin Urging the Claims of the American Colonies before Louis XVI by George Peter Alexander Healy, c. 1847, oil on canvas, American Philosophical Society Museum, Philadelphia (58.P.28)

Webster Replying to Senator Hayne by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1851, oil on canvas, Faneuil Hall, City of Boston Art Commission

The Peacemakers by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1868, oil on canvas, White House Historical Association (White House Collection), Washington, D.C. (947.2558.1)

Bibliography:
Healy, George P. A. Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter. Chicago: A. C. McClung and Company, 1894.
De Mare, Marie. G.P.A. Healy American Artist: An Intimate Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century. New York: David McKay Company, 1954.
Fink, Lois Marie. “Healy, George Peter Alexander.” American National Biography Online (February 2000).
Voss, Frederick S. Portraits of the Presidents: The National Portrait Gallery. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2000.
Voss, Frederick S. “Webster Replying to Hayne: George Healy and the Economics of History Painting.” American Art 15, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 34–53.

Archivists & Librarians: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fonds

The author. Image digitally altered to include glasses.

True story: I work at the Archives of American Art, but I am not an archivist. I'm a librarian in archivist's clothing (which doesn't actually look that different from librarian's clothing). When someone asks you what you do at a cocktail party and you reply "I'm a librarian," people nod knowingly, picturing shelves of books and women wearing cat-eye glasses shushing patrons (side note: I don't actually wear glasses, but I do love shushing people).  Archivists share a similar fashion sense, but the general populace has less of an understanding of what they do, so much so that one of my archivist colleagues sometimes tells people at parties that she is a librarian, just to avoid the blank stares. But what's the big difference anyway?

Professional archivists and librarians generally hold the same degree - the Masters of Library Science (or Information Science, as the trend is these days). We both organize, care for, describe, and provide access to intellectual materials. One divergence is how those materials take form. Whereas libraries deal primarily in books, which exist in many copies, archives deal in collections of unique documents which can come in widely differing formats. As a library art cataloger in my last job, I dealt with three formats of material: prints, photographs, and drawings. At the Archives of American Art I have cataloged all of the above plus a myriad of other materials ranging from audio recordings to diaries to one pair of rubber underpants.

Rubber underpants, between 1949 and 1966?
Emily Genauer papers, Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution.

Another difference comes in how those materials are described. In a library, materials are generally described on a one-to-one basis (one book = one catalog record), whereas materials in archives are usually described at the collection level (one collection comprised of many letters, photographs, etc. = one finding aid). It takes a significant mental shift for someone accustomed to the one-to-one to look at the big picture. Fortunately for me, the main purpose of my job is contrary to the normal archival pattern of description. I describe items that have been digitized on an individual basis, so I still get to provide the one-to-one ratio that I am accustomed to, but I have also learned to take into account the context of the collection these items come from. For example, the rubber underpants on their own don't tell much of a story until you know the context that the entire collection can give you - namely, that Emily Genauer (the recipient) was a newspaper art critic and Clyfford Still (the sender) was an acerbic-tongued painter who didn't appreciate her review of his work (the attached note reads "Hoping this will aid in concealing your Sunday afflictions").

Three years into my time in the archival world, I feel like much less of a librarian interloper, even if I do still think that "fonds" sounds more like a character from Happy Days than a body of records. Perhaps I might even suggest a title change to Archibrarian. Librarchivist? Oh, maybe I'll hold on to Librarian just so I don't have to confuse people at parties. But in the meantime, I'll be celebrating Archives Month with the best of them.

Bettina Smith, Digital Projects Librarian
Archives of American Art

Heart and Soul!: The Ellis B. Haizlip Papers

This summer I had the pleasure of reorganizing the Ellis B. Haizlip Papers at the Anacostia Community Museum. The papers, accumulated by Haizlip throughout his adult life, tell the true story of Haizlip's fascinating life as a television producer and of a variety of American social and cultural interests during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Rehoused Haizlip materials.  Photography by Leanna Duncan

Ellis B. Haizlip worked on shows such as Soul!, a variety show featuring notable African-Americans from entertainers to artists to political figures, and Watch Your Mouth!, an educational sitcom designed to encourage an acceptance and appreciation of both diversity and formal English language usage in teenage viewers. He also produced plays and other live events, such as tributes and award ceremonies, and was involved with dozens of political, cultural, and community organizations, including a diverse spread of groups working for racial and LGBT equality. Documents relating to these interests are plentiful within the collection.

Photography by Leanna Duncan

Above is a 1982 flyer calling for a demonstration against a violent attack on Blue’s, a Black gay bar. Notably, the flyer asserts that the attack was motivated by both racism and anti-lesbian/gay sentiment. It cannot be ascertained from the documents whether Haizlip attended this demonstration, or was merely informed of it.

This envelope is part of Haizlip's Stamp collection.  Photography by Leanna Duncan

The program below is from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, of which Haizlip was a board member. It is autographed by Betty Ford. Other notable programs in the collection include a playbill signed by a very young Denzel Washington and one featuring short biographies of Al Pacino and James Earl Jones before they became the household names they are today.

Photography by Leanna Duncan

Besides programs, the collection also features other printed materials, including newsletters and magazines. Additionally, there are many newspaper and magazine clippings dealing with a variety of issues of interest to Haizlip, including South African politics and apartheid, music (ranging from Bob Marley to Duke Ellington to Cindy Lauper), and various domestic columns offering up pot roast recipes and interior decorating trends. The variety of topics addressed in the texts offer up both a picture of the things that interested Haizlip and a fascinating cross-section of the U.S. media landscape in the 1970s and 1980s.

I had a wonderful time exploring the Ellis B. Haizlip Papers and hope that researchers will enjoy them as much as I did!

Leanna Duncan
2013 Summer Intern
Anacostia Community MuseumArchives

True Story? Glass Lantern Slides

The Smithsonian Collections Blog theme for American Archives Month is True Story--a simple enough assignment until you go looking for one! According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word 'story' is defined as 'a narrative, true or presumed to be true.' In the case of glass lantern slides, presuming that the story they tell is completely true can be a bit problematic.

Glass lantern slide images c. 1920s-1930s from the J. Horace McFarland Collection at the Archives of American Gardens.
Which one tells the true story?

Thousands of historic glass lantern slides in the Archives of American Gardens dating back to the 1920s and 1930s depict gardens and landscapes at their finest and were often used to illustrate lectures like our modern-day PowerPoint presentations. Before color film became prevalent, a colorist, or person who applied translucent paint to black-and-white film on glass, wielded a great deal of power when producing these lantern slides. The shades they used may have heightened the actual plant colors or even introduced a completely different color palette! Considering that the coloring was typically done in a photography studio far from where the images were photographed, it is anyone's guess just how accurate some of the details are.

These two images from the J. Horace McFarland Collection highlight just how untruthful the colorist's artistry could be. While the images are exactly alike, the colors are radically different. Transforming a clump of purple irises to yellow irises was as easy as choosing a different paint color--no replanting necessary. The artistic results are stunning, but can be a nightmare for garden historians trying to identify specific plants for garden restoration purposes.

Regardless of how truthful they are, even today, hand-tinted glass lantern slides should be celebrated for transporting their viewers to colorful and inviting locales, places where black-and-white images would be a drab substitute. In this case, 'presuming' their truthfulness is certainly an understandable error.

Joyce Connolly, Museum Specialist
Archives of American Gardens

Jim Pepper: Jazz and Native American melodies

True story: Native American musicians have been involved in jazz from its earliest days. Mildred Bailey (Coeur d’Alene) was the first “girl singer” to front a jazz big band in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Musicians such as “Big Chief” Russell Moore, Oscar Pettiford, Charlie Parker, and many more self-identified as being of Native American heritage. In the 1960s, Native American saxophonist Jim Pepper played with many of the greats of the free jazz scene, including Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman, and was a member of Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra in the in 1970s.  

Handwritten musical score to "Witchi-Tai-To," by Jim Pepper.  From the Jim Pepper Sheet Music Collection, NMAI.AC.062

Aside from his remarkable musicianship, Pepper stands out for having brought Native American musical ideas into jazz itself. Pepper’s mother was Creek and his father was Kaw, and he grew up listening to his father’s father sing Native American Church peyote songs and traditional Kaw melodies. These influences stayed with him, and years later found their way into his composition “Witchi-Tai-To,” which was built around one of the peyote songs Pepper learned from his grandfather. He first recorded “Witchi-Tai-To” with the jazz-rock fusion ensemble Everything is Everything, and it found commercial success upon its release in 1969, reaching #69 on the Billboard Pop chart. Pepper recorded “Witchi-Tai-To” again in 1971 on his record Pepper’s Pow Wow, which featured giants of the jazz fusion scene including Billy Cobham and Larry Coryell, as well as American Indian singer-songwriter Peter La Farge.

Jim Pepper's Selmer "Balanced Action" Saxophone.  26/6293

Jim Pepper continued to be active in both jazz and the Native American cultural community until his death at the age of 50 in 1992. His family donated his saxophone and several of his beautiful handwritten musical scores to the National Museum of the American Indian in 2007.

Pepper made a lasting impression on jazz musicians, Native and non-Native. For example, saxophonist and poet Joy Harjo honored Pepper in her recording “The Musician Who Became a Bear: A Tribute to Jim Pepper” from the Smithsonian Folkways recording Heartbeat 2: More Voices of First Nations Women.  

Michael Pahn
National Museum of the American Indian, Archive Center