Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -
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Sale 2697 - Lot 201

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(ENTERTAINMENT--MUSIC.) Photo album of jazz saxophone player Fletcher Allen's tours through Europe, India, and Egypt. 151 mounted photographs (most about 3 x 4½ inches) on 20 album leaves, many of them neatly captioned, plus 27 other larger photos laid in (mostly early copy prints, most about 10 x 8 inches). Quarto album, 10 x 11 inches, worn original cloth post binder gilt-stamped "Photographs, F.B.A." on front board; some photos torn out or excised from the album, with only minor wear to those which remain. Various places, 1928-circa 1943
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Additional Details

Fletcher Bedford Allen (1905-1995) was a jazz saxophone player and bandleader. He was born in Wisconsin, and relocated to New York as a young man. After touring internationally in the 1920s and 1930s and serving in the United States Army during World War Two, he performed in New York regularly though the 1970s.

This album was compiled with photos from his tours circa 1928-1940. Interspersed with tourist snapshots of India, Egypt, France, and Switzerland are numerous candid images of Allen, his fellow musicians, and the friends they made on their journeys. Allen can be seen posed with a car on an Alexandria street, with his girlfriend Elsa / Elsie and their dog in France and Cairo, in a white suit and pith helmet at the Taj Mahal, on a steamship cruising through the Suez Canal, holding a large snake in Bombay, on the beach in Brighton, at an English park with Louis Armstrong in 1933. One of the large copy prints shows the band "with Louis arriving in Sweden," and another shows him posed on stage with Armstrong's orchestra in Holland, 1933. Count Basie's trumpet player Buck Clayton has inscribed two of the photos. An Egyptian-printed promotional composite photograph shows Allen with his band. A matted official Army photo shows Allen in uniform with his rank: "T4 Army Band." Several golfing images are included: an Egyptian golf pro, Allen with his golf teachers in England in 1933, "golfing in Cairo," and more.

Provenance: given by "Mr. Fletcher" to a friend and golfing buddy in the Bronx during his later years; consigned by a family member of the golfing buddy.

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