1950s

Years of low-paying gigs in Indianapolis’ dive bars brought a broke and disillusioned Arthur “Montana” Taylor to Cleveland in 1936. The boogie-woogie pianist nicknamed for the state where he grew up capitalized on the music’s popularity in 1946 by recording 13 songs for Circle Records. But when those didn’t take off, he returned to the jazz clubs along Scovill Avenue. This is the last known picture of him, taken a few years before his death at age 51 and recently discovered in the collection of the late Cleveland photographer Jasper Wood. “You leave his small place, barely furnished,” Wood wrote in an essay on jazz, “where sometimes he sits in deep bitterness, not then able to play his heart out because his soul is tied in knots, and you know … that despite his extreme ‘scuffling’ for a living, he will every once in a while make music fit for kings.”