Dave McKenna 1930-2008

Dave at the piano

This is the photo that didn’t make it into the Rhode Island Hall of Fame to represent Dave McKenna. That was hard on me, because I really loved Dave, and when I got a series of phone calls several years ago asking me to submit something, I was so excited I didn’t really mind jumping through all the required hoops to get shots to someone “yesterday.” In the end, it was discovered that they needed a full frontal portrait, so this shot was obviously out. However, it remains one of my favorite shots of him. Perhaps partly because of the memories it evokes for me.

Shooting recording sessions could be either very loose and relaxed or very tense, sometimes chaotic, and sometimes almost impossible because of all the people running in and out. If this particular session was any of those things, it was slightly loose in the respect that Dave was working alone and every once in a while, he might get up and light a cigarette, and wander around the studio for a few minutes, thinking. A man alone with his music.

We spoke a little about his earlier years, with the big bands he had left home to play with. And in more than one session he spoke about his dislike of having his photo taken and used for the covers of his records, and his nostalgia for the days when they would use photos of good-looking women or cocktails to sell a record. After I read of his death last month, I went to Concord’s site to see all of his work from recent years. I was glad to see that one of his later covers featured a good-looking martini sitting on a piano. I bet he liked that one.