Magazine for July 2010
Harry Hammond
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Many of our 11.15 congregation will remember Harry, who died in March 2009 at the age of 88. He was the first great photographer of British rock’n'roll, chronicling the first decade of that music, up to and including the emergence of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. |
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He photographed every major American rocker who visited Britain, from Bill Haley through to Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran. His shots of Gene Vincent, newly clad in black leather, were to be particularly influential on later stars, including David Bowie and Ian Dury, while his portrait of Buddy Holly on stage was to become the image for ‘Buddy’, the long-running West End musical.
His work also embraced the first British response to rock’n'roll, with the definitive photos of Lonnie Donegan, Cliff Richard, Billy Fury and Adam Faith. Many of these were taken on the sets of the pioneering television shows of the late 1950s Six-Five Special and Oh Boy!, capturing clearly the drama and excitement created by the shows’ producer, Jack Good.
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A exhibition of his work opens the Leamington Spa Art Gallery within the Pump Rooms on Friday 2nd July 2010 and will stay there until 5th September. There are around 100 photographs of some of the music scene’s biggest celebrities of the 1940′s, 50′s and 60′s. Admission is free.