Andrew Sullivan

PROJECTS: Harlem Jazz

   
Max Lucas, 98, finishes at midnight at the Lenox Lounge, where he performs with his son's band.
   
Sedric Choukron prepares his saxophone.
     
  
Marjorie Eliot has hosted jazz shows in her apartment every Sunday for 15 years.
   
A trombone student waits in the wings, hoping to be asked to perform with the Melvin Vines Quartet.
   
Jukebox, Harlem.
     
  
Reflected in the piano at his club, Bill Saxton performs in the space that housed a speakeasy and hosted Billie Holiday's debut.
   
Jazz drummer
   
Harry "The Hat Man" Tuck, retired hat maker.
     
  
"When you walk in here, you're taking a step back in time," said Al Reid, owner of Lenox Lounge.
  
Linda Hutchinson, who calls herself Billie Holiday Jr., readies for her last songs of the night at the Cotton Club.
   
Omar Edwards dances at Minton's Playhouse, the club where Charlie Parker was said to have invented bebop during after hours jam sessions. Edwards is no less experimental with his tap dancing in which he uses his shoes to tell "the history of man."
     
  
Seleno Clarke.
   
Singer Kay Mori, moonlighting as a bartender at St. Nick's Pub, restocks the bar as a band with David Bowie's drummer Dennis Davis, left, performs late one night.
   
Saxophone
     
  
The Cotton Club Orchestra packs up at the end of the night. The Cotton Club of the 1920's excluded black customers, even as most of its performers were black.
  
The neon glows on an empty bar just before closing time at the Cotton Club. Duke Ellington led the house band at the original club from 1927 to 1931 and convinced the owner of the club, bootlegger Owney Madden, to ease restrictions on black customers.