Tod Papageorge, Garry Winogrand, Paul McDonough: And It’s Again Carla Bley’s : Escalator Over the Hill

Three great American photographers capture the making of Carla Bley’s award-winning jazz album

In January 1967, jazz composer Carla Bley (1936–2023) received a poem in the mail from a writer friend of hers, Paul Haines. As she later said, it “fit mysteriously with a piece of music I was working on … when I told [Paul] how amazing this was, we decided to write an opera together.” In 1971, the result of this collaboration, Escalator Over the Hill, was released. The album was named Jazz Album of the Year by Melody Maker in 1972 and awarded the Grand Prix du Disque in 1973. Accompanying the LP, a catalog of pictures of the musicians and recording sessions was made by photographers Tod Papageorge (who also sings on the album), Garry Winogrand and Paul McDonough. And It’s Again includes a selection of those photographs alongside Bley’s narrative-chronicle of the making of the album. This booklet is published alongside a newly pressed three-LP set of the original album.