Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times Frank Driggs with some of his collection in 2005.One of the largest collections of jazz photographs in the world, an archive painstakingly assembled over six decades by the record producer and writer Frank Driggs, has been donated to Jazz at Lincoln Center.
When Mr. Driggs died, in September 2011, he left behind eight filing cabinets in his Greenwich Village home bulging with more than 78,000 photographs of jazz, ragtime and pop artists, from the obscure to the iconic, all alphabetized in well-thumbed manila folders.
Many of the photographs had been given to Mr. Driggs, a former producer for Columbia Records, by the musicians themselves during decades when he haunted New York’s jazz clubs. The collection is widely regarded as unique in its size and scope: there are 1,545 images of Duke Ellington; 1,083 shots of Louis Armstrong; and 692 photographs of Benny Goodman.
During his lifetime, publishers, labels, historians and film producers frequently mined Mr. Driggs’s files for historic material, paying for the use of the images. He was a major contributor to Ken Burns’s TV documentary “Jazz,†first broadcast in 2001. In 2005, his collection, which includes posters, tickets and other memorabilia, was appraised at $1.5 million by Dan Morgenstern, a jazz scholar at Rutgers.
Though several jazz institutions tried to acquire the collection, Mr. Driggs resisted those overtures and continued to amass photographs until his death. Now, the executor of his estate, Harris Lewine, has given the trove to Jazz at Lincoln Center, along with rights to the photographs. That will give the nonprofit a new revenue stream.
“Jazz at Lincoln Center has a deep and nuanced understanding of the importance and relevance of the collection, and they shared a unique vision about how they will make it available, accessible and relevant,†said Mr. Lewine, an author who collaborated with Mr. Driggs on the 1982 book “Black Beauty, White Heat: A Pictorial History of Classic Jazz.â€
The jazz nonprofit has promised to create a permanent display for the collection at the Frederick P. Rose Hall on Columbus Circle, said Gabrielle Armand, the group’s vice president for marketing and corporate sponsorship. Ms. Armand said the photographs would also be made available to scholars and museums.
Donna Ranieri, a friend of Mr. Driggs who has administered the collection for his estate, said the collector left instructions in his will that the photos and memorabilia should be given to an educational institution, but did not specify which one. It took more than a year for Mr. Lewine and the lawyers handling Mr. Driggs’ estate to settle on Jazz at Lincoln Center. “Frank loved New York with all his heart,†she said. “It was the epicenter of everthing to him, and the fact that the collection is staying in New York is a great thing.â€
An amateur jazz trumpeter from Vermont, Mr. Driggs moved to Manhattan in the early 1950s and began saving posters, fliers, ticket stubs and photos. At the time, he was writing for jazz magazines and spending his nights at clubs like Basin Street, Jimmy Ryan’s, Birdland, Café Bohemia and the Savoy Ballroom. He became relentless in tracking down and acquiring photographs. He often asked musicians he interviewed for access to their personal collections.
“I was interested in the history of jazz and I began buying photographs to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and gaps in the current accounts of the day,†Mr. Driggs told The Times in 2005.
In the late 1950s, the producer John Hammond hired Mr. Driggs at Columbia Records, where he was responsible for re-issuing important recordings by Fletcher Henderson, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa and the bluesman Robert Johnson.
Though he talked in his later years about selling his store of images, Mr. Driggs could never bring himself to part with it, friends said. “It was his whole life’s work and it was hard for him to give it away during his lifetime,†Ms. Ranieri said. “It gave him a reason to get up in the morning.â€
