Chuck Stewart

Charles Stewart (May 21, 1927 – January 20, 2017) was an American photographer best known for his portraits of jazz singers and musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Earl Hines, and Miles Davis, as well as artists in the R&B and salsa genres. Stewart's photographs have graced more than 2,000 album covers.

Early life Stewart was born in Henrietta, Texas, and grew up in Tucson, Arizona. His father, Hugh Paris Stewart, was a chef while his mother, Anne Harris, was a domestic worker. He received a Kodak Brownie camera as a present when he was 13 years old and used it that same day to take photos of Marian Anderson, who had come to visit his school Dunbar. He graduated in 1949, His work appeared on more than 2,000 albums and in publications including Esquire, Paris Match and The New York Times, as well as in the Encyclopedia of Jazz by jazz journalist Leonard Feather. In 2014, 25 of Stewart's photographs documenting the recording of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme were inducted into the Smithsonian.

Death A widowed father of three children and daughter-in-law Kim Stewart, Stewart lived in Teaneck, New Jersey, from 1965 in a home furnished with carpeting and fixtures that he received from some of his photography assignments. Despite having a piano in his home, Stewart remarked that he himself "couldn't play Chopsticks", even after years of lessons.