Kilgore native Hank O’Neal recently released his latest book, More Than the Music, capturing his decades-long involvement with jazz performers and supporters, including Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Bennett, Eubie Blake, Allen Ginsberg, Les Paul, and Clint Eastwood.
As a New York photographer and a music producer, after a career with the CIA, O’Neal’s roots in East Texas run deep within his music-loving soul. He dedicates the book to the “unknown person who, in the fall of 1938 in Kilgore, Texas, sold my mother the wrong record that, 15 years later, launched my musical journey that continues to this day.”
While going through his parents’ records as a 14-year-old then living in Syracuse, New York, O’Neal discovered the music that would set his course years later.
“One of them was ‘Indian Love Call’ by Art Shaw and His Orchestra with a hot vocal by Tony Pastor and nothing was ever quite the same,” he says.
More Than the Music features 27 unique jazz stories told by Hank O’Neal through his own experience since his teenage discovery of jazz. By the time he reached New York City in 1967 and began aging out of his 20s, many of the people who were previously just names on records or in books were now people he had met, worked with, and were getting to know on a personal level.
He’s picked out terribly talented and fascinating music-oriented men and women with whom he had more than a simple working relationship; these were people who helped shape his life, some in significant ways.
“I have purposely mixed it up. While most were jazz musicians, others came from different worlds: a CIA director (Edwin M. Ashcraft), a famous movie star (Clint Eastwood), a noted poet (Allen Ginsberg), a famous industrialist (Sherman M. Fairchild), a legendary talent scout and social activist (John Hammond), a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and academic (Mel Powell), and the world’s foremost music festival producer (George Wein). And yet, it was the music that brought all of us together, and I consider myself very lucky to have known them.”
Named for his father, Harold L. O’Neal Jr. was born June 5, 1940, in Kilgore, Texas. Although the family moved away from East Texas when he was a boy, his deep roots, memories, and many return trips as an adult make it one of the most special places in the world to him.
In 2017, O’Neal released a book centered on his parents in East Texas, a place his father called “Heavenland.” Preserving Lives: An American Family’s Scrapbook, 1920-1950 is the story of two ordinary people living ordinary lives in East Texas almost a century ago.
Find his books on Amazon and on the Texas Christian University authors’ site. Learn more about O’Neal’s photography and other accomplishments on www.hankoneal.com.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.geddieconnections.com ’
