They say it’s who you know in the music business if you need things like access. It’s true. I heard that Ike Turner was going to play at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Fest which was held a little early this year the weekend after Labor Day and I wanted the shots. I needed access to Gallup Park for September 9th if I wanted to shoot Ike. So I remembered I photographed our buddy percussionist Muruga when he did a gig to benefit the A2 Blues and Jazz Fest with returning prodigal son John Sinclair who recited blues history poetry while the band backed him.  A lot of you students may know that Sinclair, who now lives in New Orleans, was the manager of the early knock em down boys the MC-5. Also he was thrown in jail on a trumped up 2 joint charge and given a 10 year prison sentence.  John Lennon and Stevie Wonder did a benefit concert to free Sinclair, and Lennon even wrote and recorded a song called appropriately “Free John Sinclair”. Yeah Sinclair was a radical, but it was really just about Rock n Roll freedom and the vices that go along with it. 

Convention always hated competition which is why the law picked on he and the 5.  Sinclair’s book “Guitar Army” is an amusing chronicle of those days.  Plus Sinclair was a promoter of the A2 Blues and Jazz Fest in the early seventies and booked such greats as Miles Davis and Sun Ra to name a very few;  and now has a radio show in New Orleans.

Anyway, my earlier pictures of Muruga and Sinclair in Ann Arbor came out pretty good for club lighting.  So, knowing some principles of the A2 Blues and Jazz Fest, I thought I was a shoe in. Boy, was I wrong. The current promoter questioned who I was and said “anybody can claim to be a photographer, how do I know you’re just not somebody who wants to get in for free?”.

I really can’t  blame him much because he didn’t know me or my references which have grown considerably in recent times, so I told him I’d get back to him with one.  There’s a certain rhythm and blues musician in Mississippi that I photographed successfully who I heard was signing with the very same record label out of New York that Ike Turner is on. So I send an email to the manager of the Mississippi guy asking him if he knows anybody at Ike’s record company who could get me in. He says yeah, and sends me the phone number. When I called up the New York guy at Rooster Records to ask him if he would contact the A2 Fest promoter for me and fix things up, he said “sure”.  Of course it helped that I sent him some photos of the Mississippi artist.

And that’s how I got in. Full access by knowing the right connection. The weather was raining for most of the weekend, and I worried if the concert would be rained out ruining my chances of capturing Ike on film. A photographer can’t use a wet lens.  Like so often, when you go for it you’ll get lucky as I did. It didn’t rain during Ike’s gig, or when legendary jazz guitarist John Scofield performed. I got the shots. Sinclair was backstage being his jovial self when I took a few of him. The owner of Rooster Records Rob Johnson was there too, so I got a shot of he and Sinclair with A2 blues harmonica maestro Madcat Ruth. It was a good gig.