Chalis O’Neal, Ernest Melton, and Dieu-Aime Nsikoh on stage at the Blue Room, 2025 (from the artist)
Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn’t methodical, but jazz isn’t messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon. — Nat Wolff
If there is a genre of music that best embodies the nuances of the human experience, it may very well be jazz. From tightly arranged compositions by Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to the free-flowing riffs of Nina Simone, John Coltrane, and today’s Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott), jazz has solidified itself as a founding pillar of today’s popular music. The influence of jazz can be felt in the music of such popular luminaries as Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and others. The legendary Prince incorporated jazz standards such as Ellington’s “Take The ‘A’ Train” into his concert performances.
The lush jazz photographs of local photographer Dan White, currently on exhibit at The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, speaks to jazz, not just as an embodiment of the human experience and fountain from which American popular music flows, but also as an art form that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, like all great art does.
White, a Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer and member of the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame, does more than just take photographs of jazz musicians. His mastery of composition, aperture, and ability to capture the Zeitgeist of the moment combines to create an exhibition that draws the viewer into the performance of jazz itself, those unique moments of spontaneity and individual expression within the cocoon of group expression that make jazz what it is — a uniquely American art form born of struggle and coming to adulthood in celebration.
President Truman was a piano player himself. He learned to play at age seven, taking lessons from a Mrs. E.C. White, a respected piano instructor in Kansas City. Truman once had a backstage lesson from the famed Ignacy Jan Paderewski, after Paderewski’s concert at the now closed Shubert Theater.
“I am still very much interested in music and what it does for people,” Truman said in 1951. “My daughter has some interest in music… My mother was very fond of music, and my father used to sing in the church choir. So I come by my love of music honestly.”
He also quipped, “There are some people … who think maybe the country would have been better off if I had gone ahead and become a professional musician. I can’t say that I agree with them.”
The work on display includes 50 black and white portraits of jazz musicians taken between 1987 and 2006, as well as more recent color photographs. White began this project after spending time in local jazz clubs.
One standout image portrays Chalis O’Neal, Ernest Melton and Dieu-Aime Nsikoh on stage at the Blue Room. In a shot taken at a slight angle with a slight blur, White successfully captures nuances of musical stillness and movement under the neon Blue Room sign. This image’s gumbo-like mix of hot, warm, and cold colors is as delicious to the eye as gumbo is to the tongue. The musicians are clearly in the moment, carried by the rhythm into far-off lands within the imagination.
A 1987 image of the late Orville Minor, a former member of the Musicians Protective Union Local 627 that conducted jam sessions at the Mutual Musicians Foundation, pays homage to Kansas City’s deep jazz roots. Minor played with Jay McShann, Charlie Parker, Gene Ramey, Gus Johnson, Buddy Anderson and others in his lengthy career. That career stretches back to the time when Kansas City was known as the Paris of the Plains, alcohol flowed freely even during Prohibition, and jazz clubs were known for giving a key to a taxi driver and paying the driver to drive as far as they could and throw the key out the window, meaning that the clubs never closed.
In this image, the sharply dressed, gray-haired and balding Minor gazes at the camera with one eye while blowing a trumpet. Minor’s peaceful and knowing gaze speaks to the faith in their craft that these musicians embraced. It was that faith that kept them constantly practicing and performing long after jazz had ceased to be America’s most popular genre of music. The image is comforting and challenging at the same time. It is jazz.
While the photographs are clearly the centerpiece of this exhibition, it also includes nine banners (24 x 36”) presenting anecdotes taken from interviews with several of the artists. Information about the musicians from jazz expert Chuck Haddix, host of the weekly NPR radio show “The Fish Fry,” is also part of this exhibition.
Simultaneously educational, entertaining and edifying, “Jazz KC Portraits by Dan White” is good for the eyes, the heart and the soul.
“Jazz KC Portraits by Dan White” continues at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, 500 W. U.S. Highway 24, Independence, through Dec. 30. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday – Saturday. For more information 816.268.8200 or www.trumanlibrary.gov.
