Terry Cryer - The Dean of Jazz and Blues Photography

January 24, 2017

It's with sadness we heard of the departure of legendary British photographer Terry Cryer last week. 

Cryer was born in Leeds in 1934, having survived a brain fracture from falling down some stairs resulting in meningitis as a child you would be right to think it wasn't the best of starts. But Terry was clearly a fighter, after serving in the British Army he returned to Leeds and after some time doorstepping his photography for local families he met Bob Barclay Jazz Tuba player who opened a club "Studio 50", he invited Cryer to come and photograph the players who came to play at his club.

It was in 1956 when he shot Louis Armstrong at Manchester's Free Trade Hall. Cryer's bad luck didn't end there when he broke his neck in a car accident "We had got pissed with Big Bill in the dressing room after the concert and Bob Barclay fell asleep at the wheel, it is not surprising we crashed!"

In 1957 he made the move to London where he took a post at The Jazz News. 

Mojo Magazine would go on to call him "The Dean of Jazz and Blues Photography" it's easy to see why.

*the following images do not belong to us.

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