World Gallery- Paula Ross: Biography

I don't really think of myself as a photographer but rather as a lifelong jazz fanatic whose art process begins with a black and white picture. Some force within takes these shots and responds to the music while filtering through my head and merging with color postcard images from the Jersey shore in the forties. This mind salad makes up my emotional palate. Jazz has been an important part of life since I was an eight year old night owl discovering Symphony Sid - the jazz radio host in New York who broadcast from Birdland. Later on I had the good fortune to see Billie Holiday at a tiny club in Newark, New Jersey called the Sugar Hill...it was a transformational experience. Billie became my muse, and jazz has remained my all consuming passion. I could rely on it to be there like a friend, to soothe, comfort, and inspire me. I started haunting the New York club scene to see the greats -- Clifford Brown and Max Roach, Miles Davis, Dizzie Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan...to name a few. I looked older but was only fourteen. I still get goose bumps to think that my idols from long ago are now my friends.

Traditionally, jazz was depicted in black and white, so were mine, but in time I chose to include the colorful auras which I sensed emanating from the players and their instruments. The color process involved is more staining than painting. I rub transparent photo oils onto the print, and work late into the night while I listen to the music of the musician whose portrait I'm working on at the time. No two are ever the same. Memories and emotions of the past are in the air there-- hot summer nights in Central Park watching Billie while I held hands with Gary Weinstein at "Jazz Under the Stars". I close my eyes and I see a young, handsome Chet Baker (whom I had just met), gazing at me straight from the stage singing "You Don't Know What Love Is"...I almost passed out. I conjure up Chris Connor, her rich, raspy voice singing "All About Ronnie" on the radio of my hipster boyfriend's pastel blue and yellow Studebaker while we headed for Asbury Park at 3am.

Sitting in the audience in 1957 at the Randall's Island Jazz Festival I hadn't a clue I was witnessing one musician after another transcribing their indelible page into jazz history...the Friday night line up included Count Basie, Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughan, Jimmy Smith, Randy Weston with Cecil Payne , Horace Silver, Carmen McRae, Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck and Maynard Ferguson. Saturday night: Bud Powell, Ruby Braff, Billie Holiday, The Max Roach Quintet, Anita O'Day, The Gerry Mulligan Quartet, and The Dizzie Gillespie Orchestra!!

My one regret is that I never took a picture of any of the musicians I saw at that time. The images are forever etched in my soul. It took more than half a lifetime to blend art and music. Better late than never. Thankfully, the musical tradition lives on. New sounds, new faces, new venues...but always the essence remains. The elder mentors pass on their experience and expertise to the next generation as I have passed on whatever I witnessed and heard to my daughter Pam, as she has passed it on to the next generation, her first child...her name is Eliza Jazz.