Blasts from the Past: 40 Overlooked Masters Who Still Stire our Souls

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Rabindranath Tagore (1861?1941)
Once as famous as Einstein, with whom he publicly discussed the meaning of life, this Nobel Prize?winning poet, dramatist, novelist, and thinker led a literary renaissance in his native Bengal and presented a modern version of the wisdom of India to the West. Tagore was a shrewd idealist who felt that East and West had much to teach each other on the road to a better world for all; openly admiring elements of British culture, he could still denounce imperialism in ringing words. (Book: Tagore: An Anthology; ed. by Krishna Dutta; St. Martin?s, 1997)
?Jon Spayde

Tina Modotti (1896?1942)
A still life with guitar, bullets, and sickle; an achingly beautiful portrait of a pregnant farmworker holding a child?Modottti?s ostensibly leftist photography captures the sensuous details of real human lives caught up in revolution and fuses the personal with the political in powerful ways. In 1923 she went to Mexico with her lover (and photography mentor) Edward Weston and became friends with artist Frida Kahlo and her circle. A photographer for only seven years, Modotti abandoned her art to serve the Communist Party in Europe. (Book: Tina Modotti: Radical Photographer, by Margaret Hooks; Da Capo, 2000) ?Karen Olson

Johnny Hodges (1906?1970)
Many midcentury jazz greats were honored with authoritative nicknames like Duke, Count, and Pres, so it?s easy to dismiss a saxophonist known to his friends as Rabbit. But don?t do it. Soulful and sensuous on the alto sax, Johnny Hodges shone brightly during four decades in Duke Ellington?s horn section, and on smooth and sultry recordings of his own. ?Our band will never sound the same,? Ellington said when Hodges died. (CD: Johnny Hodges: Verve Jazz Masters; Verve, 1994)
?Jay Walljasper

Little Walter (1930?1968)
Marion Walter Jacobs virtually reinvented the harmonica by playing right into a handheld microphone, transforming his down-home folk instrument into the ?Mississippi saxophone.? He made his name as a sideman on Muddy Waters? Chicago blues classics, but his own ?50s recordings match the very best of Muddy?s. Rocking hard, with jazz and swing undertones, they offer the perfect setting for his slow-burning vocals. (CD: Little Walter: His Best; Chess/MCA, 1997; Book: Blues With a Feeling: The Little Walter Story, by Tony Glover, Scott Dirks, and Ward Gaines; Routledge, 2002)
?Jay Walljasper

Jack Smith (1932?1989)
His notorious Flaming Creatures (1963), a sweet-natured polysexual carnival of cavorting bodies, made Smith a father of underground cinema, but his offbeat live performances, passion for old Hollywood films, and taste for dumpster-and-thrift-shop fabulousness were equally important
in shaping a gay aesthetic that?s influenced everybody from filmmaker John Waters to playwright-director Charles Ludlam. Best of all, Smith was a permission-giver. ?Make perfect art and you will be admired,? he wrote. ?Make imperfect art and you will be loved.? (Book: On Jack Smith?s Flaming Creatures and Other Secret Flix of Cinemaroc, by J. Hoberman; Granary Books, 2001)
?Jon Spayde

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