Over on the curiously named blog, If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, Tom Sutpen has posted the above image which he titled When Legends Gather #545. It is one of those historic images that despite showing little craft, so definitively captures a slice of history that it demands an extended examination. It's everything a good snapshot should be. Tom has provided no caption other than Charles Mingus and Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, so, this being late on a Friday, I thought I'd fill in the gaps (really it's just an excuse to play Mingus Ah Um really loudly.) Most people will know who Charles Mingus is. Pannonica 'Nica' Koenigswaterm however, while less known except among aficionados, is a legend in her own right in the jazz world. To understand her influence consider a few of the many jazz tunes named for her: Horace Silver's Nica's Dream, Thelonious Monk's Pannonica, or Sonny Clark's Nica. Unless you are a connoisseur of slingback pump and leather purse, you might think nothing of this lady in the frumpy coat, but she was a Rothschild—her father, grand-father, great-gradfather, and great-great grandfather constitute one of Europe's most important banking dynasties. (Incidentally her father, Charles Rothschild, was also an important conservationist establishing what would become the The Wildlife Trusts.)

Nica's claim to fame is that of a patron. She housed, fed, and often rescued what at times seems to be the entire New York jazz scene of the 50s and 60s. Considering the artists she is associated with (Charlie Parker died in her apartment), she must have had an outstanding ear for talent. And it turns out that she was also a photographer. While she was hobnobbing in jazz clubs and at home she was also taking candid polaroids and asking the musicians to describe three wishes—If you could have any three things in life, what would they be? Cannonball Adderley wished for a jazz artists' subsidy and David "Fathead" Newman wished "To get high…right now." Such is the world of jazz. She collected the photos and wishes in leather notebooks and eventually pitched them to publishers who told her that the project had little value. Such is the world of publishing. Pannonica's granddaughter, Nadine, salvaged the project and last year Abrams published Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats.