Will Gamble

(b. 1932, Cleveland OH; d. 2013 in New York City)

Photographer and documentarian of Jazz and creative sound.  Active in California 1959–62, and in the New York City area through the end of his life.

Will Gamble’s early work documenting culture included coverage of festivals, concerts, and larger and smaller acts performing in the Bay area, along with a handful of photographic work assignments for publications of area school systems and other interests. Gamble moved with his family to New York City in 1963.  From that time through the end of his life he was thoroughly involved in the city’s Jazz scene, as well as larger cultural spheres involving modernist theater and opera. By 1970 Gamble and family moved permanently into the newly-opened Westbeth artists community, which led to continuing interaction with other musicians and artists in the area.

Gamble in his professional life was a teacher adjacent to his time in college and graduate school, and then for long stretches in the New York City school system. He also continued to teach photography on an adjunct basis through the 1960s and 70s. He considered himself a professional free-lance photographer starting in 1961, and worked as a lab assistant in New York’s world of fashion photography. He also was a filmmaker and mixed-media artist for the Playhouse of the Ridiculous beginning in 1968.

Whether photography is seen as his vocation or avocation, it was the consuming passion that led him to witness thousands of Jazz performances and to document hundreds of them. Since 1961, Gamble’s photographic work has been occasionally exhibited in California and New York. In addition, Gamble was a lifelong enthusiast for Jazz radio—especially New York’s WKCR, whose extensive festivals of the 1970s and later he recorded off the air, along with choice morsels from other radio stations, and a smattering of location recordings of music performance.

In 2021, Gamble wife Mae and daughter Kara have trusted the archive of his audio recordings to Crossing Tones.