Page 93 – LIFE

LIFE Goes to a County Fair, 1938

August 2, 2022July 17, 2014 by

There’s a certain vibe to a state or county fair that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else. The sights, sounds and of course the smells (grass crushed by thousands of footsteps; fried dough; the indeterminate, unmistakable mingled aroma of cattle, horses, poultry and people) call to mind the slowly shortening days and cooler, thrilling nights of late summer as surely as back-to-school sales and brawls at NFL training camps.

In 1938, LIFE magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt went to Greenbrier Valley Fair in West Virginia (which three years later, in 1941, would become West Virginia’s official state fair) , and, true to form, “Eisie” came back with marvelous portraits of the fairgoers as well as wonderfully atmospheric shots of the displays, attractions and the fairgrounds themselves. But, above and beyond Eisenstaedt’s photographs, LIFE took pains to point out that in the late 1930s, even in the country’s rural bastions, “city slickers” were finding ways to entertain themselves. In fact, in the magazine’s description of the fair and its visitors, one can hear faint echoes of contemporary conversations about “authentic” versus “ironic” Americana.

As LIFE put it in an article in the September 26, 1938, issue of the magazine:

The first Greenbrier Valley Fair was held just 80 years ago. The few hundred farmers who attended gaped at the wonderful Howe sewing machine and admired a stalwart yearling who grew up to become Traveller, the big gray horse who carried General Lee through the Civil War. Today, the Greenbrier Valley Fair is one of the best-known in the South. This year . . . 100,000 paid admission to the fairgrounds near Lewisburg, W. Va. They watched the trotters race and went around looking at entries in contests for the best buckwheat, the best bread, the best begonias, the best “article made of sealing wax.”

But their major preoccupation was bodies human bodies, animal bodies, bodies that looked half-human, half-animal. The “girlie” shows, which were hot and smutty, drew smaller audiences than the freaks from crowds made up of farmers, breeders and hillbillies. Only a few city people were present, although some urban sophisticates have discovered the county fair and are beginning to make America’s great harvest-time diversion a city-folk fad.

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

West Virginia County Fair 1938

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

West Virginia County Fair 1938

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

West Virginia County Fair 1938

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Kennedy-Nixon Debates: When TV Changed the Game

August 11, 2021July 17, 2014 by

America’s first televised presidential debates—four TV showdowns between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in the fall of 1960—immediately showed how they could change the course of politics.

The details of the debates have been recounted innumerable times in the subsequent decades. The stories, meanwhile, of how Nixon showed up to the very first debate looking pale and glistening with sweat beneath the glare of the studio lights, while JFK looked (literally) tanned and rested, haven’t lost any of their power simply because they’re true.

The photos here back up those stories: Nixon did look like death warmed over; Kennedy did look like a movie star. And while pundits and armchair historians like to assert that Kennedy’s media savvy won him the election while Nixon won the debates, no data exists anywhere that positively proves either point.

The fact is, both men were formidable candidates. Each had a strong grasp of the major issues facing the country—the Space Race with the Soviets; America’s role in an increasingly complex global economy; the Civil Right Movement—and each man had very little trouble articulating his and his party’s position on them. But it’s remarkable now, however, to recall that Nixon was just four years older than Kennedy. By the look of the two men in these photographs by Paul Schutzer, they might as well have been from different generations.

Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon (right) spoke during a televised debate while opponent John F. Kennedy watches, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The candidates chatted prior to the first of their four televised debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Kennedy and Richard Nixon stood at lecterns as moderator Howard K. Smith presided at their first debate, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy watched from the wings as her husband debated Richard Nixon, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy gripped his lectern during the debate, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy gestured during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon’s hands during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two images made during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The candidates here are seen as they appeared on television, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Kennedy and Richard Nixon after the second Kennedy-Nixon debate, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon at the time of the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during one of the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Real-Life Rosies: Female Factory Workers in World War II

November 2, 2020July 15, 2014 by

The character of “Rosie the Riveter” as feminist symbol, World War II icon and mid-century heroine is ingrained in the American psyche, a symbol of both the war effort and an historic change in the American workplace. In the early 1940s, as women flooded the labor force in order to replace the millions of men who had gone off to war, a wide variety of songwriters, illustrators like the Saturday Evening Post‘s Norman Rockwell and photographers effectively invented the archetype on which all subsequent Rosies were based.

(Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller’s famous 1942 “We Can Do It!” poster, created for Westinghouse House and featuring easily the most famous and recognizable “Rosie” of them all, was not widely known during the war years, and only assumed its current, iconic status decades later.)

Among the photographers who documented this massive and, in a very real sense, revolutionary influx of female workers into traditionally male factory jobs as welders, lathe operators, machinists and, of course, riveters was LIFE’s Margaret Bourke-White.

A pioneer herself (one of LIFE magazine’s original four staff photographers, America’s first accredited woman photographer during WWII, the first authorized to fly on a combat mission, etc.), Bourke-White spent time in 1943 in Gary, Indiana, chronicling “women … handling an amazing variety of jobs” in steel factories “some completely unskilled, some semiskilled and some requiring great technical knowledge, precision and facility,” as LIFE told its readers in its August 9, 1943, issue. The magazine went on to note:

In 1941 only 1% of aviation employees were women, while this year they will comprise an estimated 65% of the total. Of the 16,000,000 women now employed in the U.S., over a quarter are in war industries. Although the concept of the weaker sex sweating near blast furnaces, directing giant ladles of molten iron or pouring red-hot ingots is accepted in England and Russia, it has always been foreign to American tradition. Only the rising need for labor and the diminishing supply of manpower has forced this revolutionary adjustment.

The women are recruited from Gary and nearby East Chicago. A minority has drifted in from agricultural areas. They are black and white, Polish and Croat, Mexican and Scottish… The women steel workers at Gary are not freaks or novelties. They have been accepted by management, by the union, by the rough, iron-muscled men they work with day after day. In time of peace they may return once more to home and family, but they have proved that in time of crisis no job is too tough for American women.

Here, LIFE.com presents a series of pictures from the Gary mills in 1943. See these women, pride shining from their faces, as well as characteristically marvelous Bourke-White shots of enormous machines and grease-lathered gears that capture the grit and rugged beauty of a factory and its workers in full production mode.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk

Women laborers cleared tracks of spilled materials, Gary, Ind. 1943.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women wearing gas masks cleaned a blast furnace top at a Gary, Ind. steel mill, 1943.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women employees at Tubular Alloy Steel Corp. in Gary, Ind. predominated at pep meeting, 1943.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bernice Daunora, 31, a member of a steel mill’s “top gang” was required to wear a “one-hour, lightweight breathing apparatus” as protection against gas escaping from blast furnaces, Gary, Ind., 1943.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Theresa Arana, 21, took down temperature recordings at draw furnaces, Gary, Ind., 1943.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A stamping machine in a rail mill at Gary was operated by Florence Romanowski (right). She mechanically branded identifications into red-hot rails. Her husband was in Army

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Katherine Mrzljak, 34, a mother of two, worked with her husband at the mill.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women welders, Gary, Ind., 1943.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scarfing is the operation which removed surface defects from slabs to condition them for rolling. The woman at the center of the photo marked out defects with chalk for the man who was doing the scarfing (right).

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Beveling an armor plate for the tanks at Gary Works, these women operated powerful acetylene torches.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Audra Mae Hulse, 20, was a flame cutter at the American Bridge Co. in Gary. She had five relatives in the plant.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lugrash Larry, 32, a laborer in the blast furnace department, was a mother of four; her husband was also a mill worker.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lorraine Gallinger, 20, was a metallurgical observer. From North Dakota, she planned to return there after the war.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blanche Jenkins, 39, a welder at Carnegie-Illinois, bought a $50 war bond each month. She had two children.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Flame cutting of a slab was done by a four-torch machine controlled and operated by one woman. Alice Jo Barker (above) had a husband and son who also worked in war industries.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The “pan man” at Gary Works was Rosalie Ivy; she was mixing a special mud used to seal the casting hole through which molten iron flowed from a blast furnace.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Transfer car operator Mae Harris, 23, signalled the crane man above to return the empty, hot metal ladle to the transfer car (left). The ladle contained molten iron which had poured into an open-hearth furnace. In the furnace the molten iron was added to molten scrap which, together with iron ore and fluxes, resulted in finished steel after refinement.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dolores Macias, 26, Gary, Ind., 1943.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Victoria Brotko, 22, was a blacksmith’s helper. She took her twin brother’s job when he joined the Marines.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ann Zarik, 22, was a flame burner in Armor Plate Division. Another image of Zarik appeared on the issue’s cover.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In the foundry of the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Co., these women worked as core-makers. A total of 18 women worked here across two shifts. The core-maker’s functions were like those of a sculptor, and the implements used were trowels, spatulas and mallets. Castings being made in this picture were for use not only at Carnegie-Illinois but at other plants.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

On an aircraft carrier deck women worked as welders and scrapers. The women alongside this steel prefabricated deck section who were without headgear and masks operated tools which scraped loose surface imperfections in preparation for welding. The welder in foreground had her name, ‘Jakie,’ written on her helmet, a popular style note among female welders.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Gary, Ind. war effort, 1943

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine cover August 9, 1943

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Haile Selassie in Jamaica: Color Photos From a Rastafari Milestone

November 2, 2020July 9, 2014 by

In terms of spiritual significance, few dates compete with April 21, 1966, in the hearts of Rastafari. Celebrated by the faithful the world over as Grounation Day, it marks the visit to Jamaica by the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, a figure worshipped as a deity by Rastafari everywhere. (Selassie was born Tafari Makonnen Woldemikael on July 23, 1892, in the Ethiopian village of Ejersa Goro; “Ras” is a noble honorific thus, Ras Tafari.)

Here, on Selassie’s birthday, LIFE presents photos from his historic 1966 trip to the Caribbean. The images capture something of the fervor and delight, as well as the barely restrained chaos, among thousands of believers upon seeing the man they considered a messiah and whom countless others still view as a power-hungry fraud.

Like photographer Lynn Pelham’s pictures, the story of Selassie’s visit never ran in the American edition of LIFE. But informal observations made by LIFE staffers who were there provide some fascinating insights into how the proceedings were viewed hint: negatively by at least some in the national press.

In notes that accompanied Pelham’s rolls of Ektachrome film to LIFE’s offices in New York just days after Selassie’s visit, for example, an editor for the magazine wrote privately to his colleagues that “the Rastafarians went wild on Selassie’s arrival. They broke police lines and swarmed around the emperor’s DC-6 [plane]. They kept touching his plane, yelling ‘God is here,’ and knocking down photographer Pelham, who got smacked. The Rastafarians fouled up the visit, as far as most Jamaicans were concerned. But Selassie seemed to love the attention these strange, wild-eyed, lawless and feared Jamaicans gave him.”

The same editor noted a few days later, when Selassie visited the Haitian dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier in Port-au-Prince, that “Papa Doc looked pretty much as evil as he did in 1963 when I last saw him.”

Haile Selassie died in Aug. 1975, almost a year after he was deposed in a military coup. There is no consensus, among historians or among Rastasfari, on whether he died of medical complications while under house arrest in Addis Ababa, or was assassinated.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Haile Selassie 1966

Lynn Pelham The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Haile Selassie in Jamaica, 1966

Lynn Pelham The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Haile Selassie in Jamaica

Lynn Pelham The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Haile Selassie in Caribbean

Lynn Pelham The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Haile Selassie in Caribbean, 1966

Lynn Pelham The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Haile Selassie in Jamaica

Lynn Pelham The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Haile Selassie in Caribbean, 1966

Lynn Pelham The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

I Was in LIFE: Ann-Margret Remembers

February 25, 2020July 8, 2014 by

Fifty-odd years ago, a young singer/dancer on the verge of breaking into the movies visited LIFE magazine’s Los Angeles bureau and for once, the news hounds who worked there were speechless.

“Everybody was working on typewriters back then, so it was very noisy,” remembers editor Richard Stolley, who was the L.A. bureau chief at the time. “I’m sitting in my office and suddenly it got quiet. All the typewriters stopped. I thought, ‘What the hell is going on?’ So I got up and I walked to the door. And what was happening? Ann-Margret was walking through the newsroom.”

Years later Stolley and Ann-Margret reminisced about that time. “That,” Stolley says of the picture at left, “is what you were wearing when you came in to the bureau.”

“It was a light blue, lambswool sweater,” Ann-Margret recalls, laughing. “That’s the only outfit I had at the time. The only one! Oh, dear.”

In the decades after that first encounter, Stolley served as the top editor of both LIFE and PEOPLE magazines, and that fresh-faced 19-year-old starlet did pretty well, too: Ann-Margret, born Ann-Margret Olsson in Stockholm, became one of Hollywood’s most vivacious stars, her energy and talent lighting up movies as varied as Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas and Tommy. Through the years, Stolley and Ann-Margret remained friends.

In 2012 the two discussed these photos made by Grey Villet (“Oh, I loved him,” Ann-Margret says of the late LIFE photographer) for the 1961 LIFE article that introduced Ann-Margret as a hot Hollywood prospect while she auditioned for a role in the film, State Fair. Many of the photos in this gallery were not originally published in LIFE.

A quick excerpt from Stolley and Ann-Margret’s chat in 2012:

STOLLEY: How important was the LIFE story to your career?

ANN-MARGRET: It was incredibly important. I had not done anything. Nobody knew me. I was amazed and shocked. What can I say? My parents were just beaming.

STOLLEY: The opening page on that story had a picture of you pointing, and the headline was “Who, Me? $10,000 a Week!” That was what we predicted would be your salary if you got the role in State Fair. How did you feel about $10,000 a week?

ANN-MARGRET: I had never heard of such money! That’s just sci-fi.

STOLLEY: How old were you when you came over to the States from Sweden?

ANN-MARGRET: Six years old. And it was my mother and I, because daddy had come to America [earlier] looking for work. That was during the war, and he thought it was much too dangerous for mother and I to cross the ocean. So five years later, my mother and I got on a huge ship and came to America. And neither one of us, of course, spoke English.

STOLLEY: There’s an unpublished picture here [the final image in this gallery] which is kind of fascinating. It’s you walking down the dusty back-lot street with a big, long shadow in front of you. The reason I like it is because it’s kind of a precursor, a forecast of the long shadow you were going to cast over Hollywood and the entertainment industry.

ANN-MARGRET: I had no idea at the time. Of anything.

STOLLEY: Nor did Grey, but he took a very prescient photograph. When I say something like that, what’s your reaction looking at this picture?

ANN-MARGRET: I’d never been to Los Angeles. Never. I wanted to be a …. [Trails off and chokes up] I can’t, I’m starting to cry!

STOLLEY: Don’t do that I’m sorry.

ANN-MARGRET: When you guys [at LIFE.com] sent me all these photographs, what a rush. It all came back to me. It’s just . . . I’m so blessed.

Ann-Margret, 1961

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret with costume designer Don Feld before a screen test, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret dining with actor Peter Brown at Har-Omar restaurant in Hollywood, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret t with actor Peter Brown at Har-Omar restaurant in Hollywood, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret looking over a script with the screen test’s director, Robert Parrish, and the actor who would read opposite her, David Hedison.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret face-to-face with actor David Hedison, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret and David Hedison rehearsing a scene on Fox’s back lot, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret with actor David Hedison, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret, Hollywood, 1961

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Studio hairdresser Helen Turpin taking care of Ann-Margret for her State Fair audition in 1961. The film’s director wanted Turpin to give her a “kind of wild, Alice in Wonderland look.”

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret, 1961

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Outfitted for a screen test, Ann-Margret with costume designer Don Feld, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret studying costume designer Don Feld’s quick sketch of what she’d wear during the second half of her screen test.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret doing the song-and-dance half of her screen test, during which she performed the old jazz standard “Bill Bailey” wearing that memorable combo of lambswool sweater and black leotard.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret during a screen test, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

At some point during the shoot for LIFE, Ann-Margret visited with her mentor, the legendary George Burns, in a prop room of a studio where he kept an office, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

With help from friend Scott Smith on piano, Ann-Margret auditioned for Dick Pierce (far left) and others at RCA Victor Records, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

To fully illustrate the Ann-Margret story for LIFE, Villet traveled to Fox Lake, Illinois, where he photographed the starlet with her loving family. She, her parents, and her aunts and uncles had all immigrated to the United States from Sweden. Her father stands above her at far left, above, and her mother is in the middle of the photo.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret with family and friends, Fox Lake, Illinois, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret dancing with her father, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret’s Uncle Roy gave her a playful spanking after she tried to tickle him, 1961. “It’s wonderful,” she said, “that Grey [Villet, the photographer] was there to capture that moment.”

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret with her uncle, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret, Fox Lake, Illinois, 1961

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

In Los Angeles, Ann-Margret practiced her golf stroke in the office of her manager, Pierre Cossette, as her friend Scott Smith (far left) and another acquaintance looked on, 1961.

Grey Villet/TIME & LIFE Pictures

With friends at her manager Pierre Cossette’s house, 1961. From the reporter’s notes: “Whenever these kids get together they perform for one another; that is, they did not stage this hoedown strictly for [photographer Grey] Villet’s benefit.”

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

According to the reporter’s notes, in this photo Ann-Margret was “exploring the back lot alone and doing a few exuberant leaps around the deserted western street.” But the image was so joyful that LIFE used it to illustrate Ann-Margret’s good news, which came after Grey Villet had finished shooting: She’d nailed the screen test and scored a movie contract with Fox.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ann-Margret on a studio back lot, Hollywood, 1961.

Grey Villet; LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Adoring Billy Eckstine: Portrait of a Jazz Legend and His Fans

November 2, 2020July 7, 2014 by

There was a time in the post-World War II era when William Clarence “Billy” Eckstine (1914-1993) was, for millions of fans and peers around the world, one of the most influential singers and bandleaders of the age. Women and girls and, no doubt, more than a few men and boys swooned over him; young musicians wanted to dress, sound and look like him; music clubs and recording studios wanted to book him. The names of the vocalists and jazz legends who played in Eckstine’s big band, meanwhile, is a Who’s Who of early, mid-1940s bebop: Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon and more.

All the more mysterious, then, why hearing Eckstine’s name not to mention his music in discussions of jazz greats is such a rarity today. After all, an artist who made an impact on giants ranging from Duke Ellington (who played in Eckstine’s big band) to Quincy Jones (who looked up to him as “an idol”) deserves to be celebrated.

Here, on what would have been Billy Eckstine’s 100th birthday he was born July 8, 1914, in Pittsburgh, Penn. LIFE.com remembers the music pioneer and style icon with a marvelous Martha Holmes photo that both captures the man’s charisma and highlights the adoration he inspired in his fans.

Billy Eckstine, New York, 1949

Martha Holmes The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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