About Freddy

Freddy became interested in photography while he was in the Royal Air Force from 1959 -1962, after buying a camera from his brother he started to take photographs of a bunch of guys that played in the regional RAF band at Henlow in Bedfordshire.

They played jazz at a pub in the nearby town of Hitchin & were good enough to get an audition at Ronnie Scotts and began playing there every Monday. On their first night, a photographer from the “Melody Maker” was taking photographs and Freddy got chatting with him. Within two months of leaving the RAF Freddy began working for Eric Jelly and Marc Sharratt as an assistant in their small Soho Studio. Much of their work was commissions from the Melody Maker.  Eric and Mark were great photographers and their work had a great influence on Freddy and his future in photography. While with them Freddy began to go to Ronnie Scotts on a regular basis. In fact, he was at Ronnie’s almost every night for some 20 years, In fact Freddy used to like telling the story of how one evening he was at Ronnie’s when the act that had been booked for that night didn’t turn up so Ronnie dragged Freddy onto the drum kit and Got another audience member up who happened to be Dudley Moore on the piano and of course Ronnie on Sax so the three of them just jammed that night.  Freddy’s photographs of various artists soon graced the walls of Ronnie Scotts night club over the years and many still hang on the walls today Freddy became quite an iconic figure in the world of jazz photography during the  60’s and 70’s  he became a personal friend to many of the jazz artists of his generation even to the point of a very excited Yusef Lateef knocking on Freddy’s Euston town apartment door asking if he could listen to an album he just brought because he couldn’t wait till he got home Freddy even told how the legendary Miles Davis wrote his address on an album cover that he had shot for him so when Freddy was next in the states he could stay with Miles, in fact if you looked at Freddy’s record collection it bared nearly every signature of the great jazz artists of the time including Theolonius Monk, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Buddy Rich, but I think the album he was most proud of was Duke Ellington and all the members of his orchestra including the great Coleman Hawkins and Jonny Hodges  Freddy’s photographs graced many music magazines and album covers doing work for the likes of Buddy Rich, Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans and many more.

Freddy also won the converted Photographer of the Year Award while he worked in the media something he was extremely proud to have won.  When you look at Freddy’s photographs you have to remember they were taken using 35mm and medium format cameras and standard film long before digital photography and photoshop …..  so all the visual effect’s you see on some of the photographs have been done using different techniques whilst taking the picture or in the dark room taking many many hours to create which were innovative of the day some of the effects Freddy perfected and invented are still being used to this day.

Tragically Freddy died in 2010 when his Euston apartment in North London caught fire unfortunately much of Freddy’s work was destroyed along with his album collection but a significant amount of his private collection still remains to which his nephew Simon has been preserving by scanning the remaining negatives and digitizing them and painstakingly taking out the imperfections from the fire and smoke damage but he hasn’t changed the color or exposure it is how they were taken minus the damage

Freddy always looked back at those jazz years and realized that he had witnessed the truly golden age of jazz he had immense pride and felt extremely privileged to have photographed so many legendary jazz musicians

Freddy would be so pleased to know that people are looking and still enjoying his work.