Scope and arrangement
The collection consists of sixty-four video recordings, which are the thirty-three interviews conducted for the documentary from 1989 to 1996. These interviews are organized alphabetically by the subject's last name. The collection consists primarily of Bach's interviews with the surviving musicians pictured in the 1958 Great Day in Harlem photograph. It also includes interviews with musicians' family and friends, as well as the photographer and others who were working for Esquire magazine at the time. Each interviewee's relationship to the photograph is detailed in the item's content note.
The musicians interviewed for the documentary are Art Blakey, Scoville Brown, Buck Clayton, Bud Freeman, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Golson, Johnny Griffin, Milt Hinton, Chubby Jackson, Hank Jones, Jonah Jones, Max Kaminsky, Eddie Locke, Marian McPartland, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, Sahib Shihab, and Horace Silver. Musicians' friends and family who were present for the photo shoot are also in the collection: Mona Hinton, wife of Milt Hinton; Taft Jordan, Jr., son of Taft Jordan; Mike Lipskin, friend of Willie "the Lion" Smith; Elaine Lorillard, friend of multiple pictured musicians and founder of the Newport Jazz Festival; Felix Maxwell, friend of Taft Jordan and Rudy Powell; Paula Morris, daughter of Maxine Sullivan; and Rudy Powell, son of Everard Powell. Photographer Art Kane and his assistant Stephen Frankfurt, art director Robert Benton, and writer and critic Leonard Feather comprise the former Esquire staffers interviewed for the documentary. The collection also includes interviews with Riverside Records publicist Robert Altshuler and writer and critic Nat Hentoff.