Black History Print - Gene Deitch - Raw Blues - Real Blues - THE BLUESMAN and the young white fan - The Record Changer 1947

Treasures from THE MUSIC COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.  Print size 18 x 24, and consciously formatted to work with a 18 x 24 frame, or custom framed as you see fit.
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As a statement on the state of things, Gene Deitch can crack his knuckles and create an image for all time. I am happy... very happy... to present several here at The Grand Review from the post war period that speak to different aspects of the era, all with a focus on jazz. Early jazz, as revered by the avid, even fanatical record collectors of that period, and where jazz and the reality of race relations intersected, a crossing which Gene Deitch addressed visually in the most natural way, that of course being revolutionary in its simplicity.

Most of us know Deitch's work in one way or another from a life in animation and illustration. Tom & Jerry cartoons for Hanna Barbera - MGM, the more obscure yet amazing Sidney The Elephant for Terrytoons and, for a very young me, Tom Terrific for UPA. 

This short intro to a truly remarkable life feels like I'm doing someone who I consider a pop culture icon somewhat of a disservice. To learn more about him, and he's worth the journey, I highly recommend The Cat On The Hot Thin Groove, all about his beginnings as an illustrator and his unabashed love of jazz, and For the Love of Prague: The True Love Story of the Only Free American in Prague During 30 Years of Communism which is, first and foremost, a love story... and not just about Prague!

Cat On A Hot Thin Groove pulls you in to the wild treasure hunting world of 1940s jazz collectors who were crazy for 1920s jazz. This is a work that included other young fanatics like Nesuhi Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, later of Atlantic Records. Weller's excellent and essential autobiography, Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American Music describes his being a teenager in the 40s and zooming all over New York City searching for dusty boxes of old jazz 78s. If you have ever really loved music to the point where it reaches into your soul and causes you to do crazy things, Gene Deitch and Jerry Wexler are your people.

This second of three restorations we've completed, eventually to become six all told, invites a moment's reflection on the realities of race relations in the US.  How far we've come and inexplicably, how far we've yet to go.

A note here about the British Invasion, repackaging Black blues and selling it back to young white Americans.  I saw a BBC documentary recently that put a light on it all that made me much more comfortable with how much of that played out.  The Brit kids really worshipped American blues players, and learned to play and perform specifically to try to embrace some of that magic.  Blues players that were unknown to white audiences in the US and playing club venues to Black audiences here in the States were filling huge halls in England and throughout Europe.  However that cross pollination worked, it did eventually work, and circuitous or not, everybody gained, culturally if not equally financially, record labels and promoters being the mixed blessing they were for everyone, no matter what color the acts were.
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SHIPPING
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A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.