I had a doctor's visit up in Southaven this morning--an orthopedist I'd never seen, for my foot. I'm in the X-ray room and the x-ray tech, female, is friendly and chatty. When I told her I played harmonica, she said, "Hey, I need to talk to you." Then she told me the following.
She has a woman friend back in Sardis (30 miles northwest of Oxford) whose aunt, now deceased, gave her a bunch of photographs--negatives, actually--taken by her husband. The woman's husband drove the King Biscuit Time bus that brought Sonny Boy Williamson around to a series of front porches of grocery stores in Helena and elsewhere in the Delta, where he played and sang and captivated crowds. According to this woman, the photos are definitely of Sonny Boy.
There are 25 negatives. They have never been printed up--or at least no prints currently exist and they've certainly never been seen by blues fans and scholars.
So I called the woman and she's definitely interested in moving ahead in some fashion to assess what she's got, print things up, copyright the photos, get them published, maybe make a little money for herself and her four siblings. I'm going to help connect her with the Blues Archive and the folks at Ole Miss.
This isn't quite like finding a third photo of Robert Johnson, but it's pretty cool, nonetheless.
Is there a portable (or non-portable) machine/box of some sort that lets you take a negative and quickly get a read on what it looks like when printed up? Or do we actually have to get them printed up in order to know what we've got?
Adam. You could scan the negatives, increase the size then put them through a negative filter which would in effect turn them into positives. Sounds complicated but anyone with PhotoShop, PaintSHop Pro etc could do it very easily in minutes. What a find? Good Luck.
Adam, Most photo scanners will scan negatives at least the Epson I used to have did. I have never used one to see how they work but mine actually came with a plastic holder for the negative strip. Do a Google search for scanning negatives and see what pops up.
---------- Thanks, Albey Scholl The Shadows Blind Willies Blues Club Atlanta, GA http://www.blindwilliesblues.com/
Unfortunately I am in the UK, but I am a photography lecturer, so if I can help let me know.
The first thing to determine is what format/size are the negs? If they are 35mm there will be no problems, these scanners are pretty common. If they are another format you have two solutions..... For the highest quality you will need to find someone with a Hasselblad scanner.... these are multi-format and definitely pro kit. Your University will almost certainly have one. The cheap and more common solution is a flat bed scanner that has a negative scanner option. These have a light source in the lid that shines through the negative, unlike common scanners that use reflective light to scan flat objects. This solution will be OK for seeing what you have, but is not the highest quality. Any idea how big the negs are?
Adam, what Libertad said. As you know, I'm a longtime photographer too, used to do corporate slide shows, copy work etc. Years of experience scanning negs, copying photos etc. If there is a major commercial lab near you, I'd try that first. University might also have the equipment but probably not the manpower/expertise unless they have a good mueseum or curator. Keep us posted. So how's the foot?
I have no details about the photos except what I've shared above. But I knew the woman was telling the truth because I've seen the following video--which has been shared here but remains stunning:
"no hype"?!? "genuinely new SBW discovery"? you are going by the word of someone that is at least 3 folks removed from the negatives. this has all the makings of al capone's vault. good luck, geraldo.
"Or do we actually have to get them printed up in order to know what we've got?" No, Adam, just look at the negatives. I used to be a newspaper photographer back in the day when you had to develop your own and I did a lot of medium format black and white landscape photography myself, I was a photo lab technician for a couple years, so I developed a lot of film in my day.
Negatives are nothing but little backwards pictures. The pictures are backwards, the colors are backwards, but they are still pictures. Surely, they are black and white, so they'll be extremely easy to read. It's not like color negatives, where the yellows are blue, etc. Everything is a shade of grey. You should be able to tell exactly what's going on by just holding it up to a light, but a light table would be nice. All you need is a magnifying glass and light.
When you hold the negatives, do so with CLEAN, DRY hands - unless you have some darkroom gloves laying around (I never even used them when I was developing). ONLY hold them the edges. Never touch the part where the picture is, oil will destroy a negative. But it's really simple, just look at the negative.
If it's something other than 35mm, you might not even need a magnifying glass. If he was using 120 film, those negatives are 2 1/2 inches wide, often 2 1/2 inches square. There's a good chance it was like that. The 35mm format didn't get popular until the late 1960s. 120 was standard everyday before that.
You work at a pretty big college. I would think, somebody there knows how to use a darkroom and there's an enlarger there someplace and you can just make a print of it.
---------- David
____________________ At the time of his birth, it was widely accepted that no one man could play that much music so well or raise that much hell. He proved them all wrong. R.I.P. H. Cecil Payne
King Biscuit Time Sonny Boy CD was what got me started in blues I remember just learning those single notes guitar runs note for note for days. Never heard anyone get the tone he got out of an F harp, holly molly!!
eharp: I've taken a look at what I wrote and I can't for the life of me find anything that looks like hype. I simply describe the conversation I had. I haven't the faintest idea whether the photos of Sonny Boy are any good. I just know that tomorrow I'm driving 30 miles and taking a look at roughly 25 negatives. No need to shoot me out of the sky. I'm not up there. I pointedly diminished expectations by noting that this discovery, whatever it turns out to be, is hardly the equal of a real discovery like an RJ photo. It's just some cool stuff--probably. The only thing that IS for sure is that these photos haven't ever been seen by blues folk like you and I. So they are, in fact, "new," even if they're not necessarily terribly good. That will all become clear by and by.
I'm going to check it out and will let folks here know what I find. If I find something truly cool, I promise that I'll alert you so that you can stay away from the forum that day while the rest of us have fun.
Last Edited by on Jan 25, 2013 12:03 PM
I find this post to be very interesting....Im a big fan of sonny boy and look forward to seeing his gravesite when I come to clarksdale in april for the festival
Garry, that's a good idea. You can reverse an image to make a negative a positive in Paint, you select all and then right click and select "invert color," which I did to a Sonny Boy II pic to illustrate how you can just look at the negative itself. Black and White negatives are super easy to read. This is a negative image that I sized to about the size of a 120 negative. You can see it's pretty obvious that it's Rice Miller... just look at the negative.
---------- David
____________________ At the time of his birth, it was widely accepted that no one man could play that much music so well or raise that much hell. He proved them all wrong. R.I.P. H. Cecil Payne
i apologize, adam. imo- a "genuinely new SBW discovery" is, in itself, hype. i, also, think new photos would be pretty cool, especially coming from this type of source. i guess i am just not the type that jumps on bandwagons without some sort of verification. and i didnt get caught up in capone's vault or the numerous reports of hoffa's grave. you stay in the sky and i hope the outcome is what you expect. but it would be different if i was the one opening the vault or digging for the grave or driving 30 miles for the negatives.
Thanks for your many suggestions, everybody. I've just called the woman and she's getting the photos out of the safe deposit box. I'll drive up on Thursday and she'll let me sit there, spread 'em out, and look at 'em. I may throw my HP Officejet 4500 in the trunk and see if she'll let me scan one negative to digital and convert it so we can get something to look at.
Nothing wrong with chasing a wild goose.
To me, best case scenario would be a closeup that would show SBW's harp and mic in sharp detail, or a photo that would show Sonny Boy--as Sterling Magee described him--standing on a milk crate and rocking a whole porch full of people. But who knows? The fun is in not knowing.
Last Edited by on Jan 25, 2013 11:28 AM
