PoPsie From the ‘40s to the ‘70s, he was Jazz and Pop Music Photography in NYC
(ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT Michael Randolph 2008 Executor to the Estate of: William "PoPsie" Randolph, All Rights Reserved - no reproduction is permitted in any media whatsoever.)
When I first heard the improbale name of PoPsie, I was standing in the lobby of Carnegie Hall. It was 1972: Folkster gone Glam-Rocker Marc Bolan had just debuted T. Rex for the NYC music industry-and-scenester-dominated crowd. I was chatting with Danny Goldberg*, then head of PR for Paramount Records (my snot-nosed college-kid self having sold Paramount photos of Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen; my friend and I had interviewed Cody for a Crawdaddy! article. One of my shots became Cody’s official press photo.)
Goldberg said he’d just been buttonholed by PoPsie, asking why he hadn’t gotten the assignment to shoot Cody. “Who’s PoPsie?,” I inquired. Goldberg explained that he was a photographer who’d been in the music biz forever. I thought to myself, “Well, PoPsie sounds like a character!”
PoPsie was indeed a character, one of the great Damon Runyon-esque New York City B&W photography characters ever.
His work has finally been collected in a book: Popular Music: Through the Camera Lens of William “PoPsie” Randolph, by PoPsie’s son Michael Randolph (the terrific book was published by the venerable music-focused imprint, Hal Leonard).
(* Danny Goldberg, a great guy, went on to fame and fortune in the business, as: Nirvana’s manager; honcho of major record labels; head of Air America radio and Warren Zevon’s final record company champion, among many other things. Goldberg and I both did a stint in the Solters & Roskin show business PR salt mines, he working for mega-client Led Zeppelin, myself toiling mostly for lesser stars.)
-Eric Rudolph
Check out more great B&W from PoPsie at:
Above, Left: Jazz giants Stan Getz and Miles Davis, January 23, 1951.
Right: Pop and Rock royalty - The Ronettes, February 6, 1962. Below: Wicked Wilson Pickett backed by a nattily-attired Jimi Hendrix, May 5, 1966 at the Prelude Club, NYC. Dig that tie on Hendrix, who a year later began his emergence as an immortal superstar.
Clockwise from top right: ‘Trane and Dizz - An impossibly-young looking John Coltrane with Dizzy Gillespie, January 19, 1951; Bop City street scene; Lionel Hampton with Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, at the famed Band Box club, NYC, June 26, 1953.
ALL PHOTOS: Copyright
Michael Randolph
2008 Executor to the
Estate of: William
"PoPsie" Randolph
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED