William Claxton, 80; captured images of jazz greats, celebrities

One of the many images William Claxton took was of Steve McQueen, shown here in his XK-SS Jaguar on Mullholand Drive in Los Angeles in 1962. The men developed a friendship. (William Claxton via Associated Press)

LOS ANGELES - William Claxton, the master photographer whose images of Chet Baker helped fuel the jazz trumpeter's stardom in the 1950s and whose fashion photographs of his wife modeling a topless swimsuit were groundbreaking years later, died Saturday, a day before his 81st birthday.

Mr. Claxton died from complications of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said his wife, actress and model Peggy Moffitt Claxton.

In a career spanning more than a half-century, Mr. Claxton also became known for his work with celebrities including Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen, who became a close friend; he gained his foremost public recognition for his photographs of jazz performers including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Mel Torme, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Stan Getz. But it was his photographs of Baker that helped teach him the true meaning of the word photogenic.

"I was up all night developing when the face appeared in the developing tray," Mr. Claxton told The Irish Times in 2005. "A tough demeanor and a good physique but an angelic face with pale white skin and, the craziest thing, one tooth missing - he'd been in a fight. I thought, 'My God, that's Chet Baker.' "

Mr. Claxton observed that over the years he had taken photographs of some ordinary-looking guys whose faces would just pop out on film. He said that's what Baker had.

His 1951 photograph of Baker started a relationship that continued for the next five or six years as he chronicled Baker's rise to become one of the most visible jazz performers of the decade.

Mr. Claxton called photography "jazz for the eyes" and tried to capture the often dynamic tension between the artist, the instrument, and the music.

"For the photographer, the camera is like a jazz musician's ax. It's the tool that you would like to be able to ignore, but you have to have it to convey your thoughts and whatever you want to express through it," Mr. Claxton told jazz writer Don Heckman some years ago.

Almost as much as the recordings themselves, the photographs reach into the essence of making music.

Born in Pasadena, Mr. Claxton grew up in an upper middle-class family in La Canada Flintridge. His mother was a musician and his older brother played piano, but Mr. Claxton had no patience for the keyboard, he said. He started collecting records, especially jazz, at an early age, taking the bus to downtown Los Angeles to hear jazz greats, including Ellington, at the Orpheum Theatre.

Years later, he would go to jazz clubs and shoot photographs of up-and-coming musicians just for fun and to listen to the music.

Mr. Claxton attended the University of California at Los Angeles but left when Richard Bock, who was starting Pacific Jazz Records, hired him as a photographer. He created a vast array of memorable album covers for the label.

Toward the end of the 1950s, he started moving into fashion work. He married Moffitt, who was the muse of fashion designer Rudi Gernreich.

In the early 1960s, they created the photographs of the topless bathing suit designed by Gernreich with Moffitt as the model.

Mr. Claxton also directed the film "Basic-Black," which is viewed by many as the first fashion video and is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

While taking assignments from Life magazine, he photographed Sinatra at a recording session at Capitol Records, Barbra Streisand in New York, and McQueen.

All were notoriously tough assignments, stars distrustful of the press and reluctant to be photographed. But he gained their trust and developed a friendship with McQueen through their common love of sports cars, race cars, and motorcycles.

His work is collected in an array of spectacular books, including "Jazz: William Claxton," "Young Chet," "Claxography," "Steve McQueen," and "Jazzlife."

In addition to his wife of 49 years, Mr. Claxton leaves a son, Christopher; a sister, Colleen Lewis of Los Angeles; and several nieces and nephews.