Five tour programmes for Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic series, 1950s, comprising: JATP 10^th National Tour, 1950, signed at their portraits by Ella Fitzgerald, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, pianist Hank Jones, trumpeter Harry Edison, trombonist Bill Harris, and impresario Norman Granz; JATP 12^th National Tour, 1952, signed at their portraits by Norman Granz, Ella Fitzgerald, saxophonists Lester Young and Flip Phillips, trumpeter Charlie Shavers, pianists Oscar Peterson and Hank Jones, guitarist Barney Kessel, drummers Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, and bassist Ray Brown; JATP 14^th National Tour, 1954, unsigned; JATP 17^th National Tour, signed at their portraits by Norman Granz, Ella Fitzgerald, all four members of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Gene Krupa, Ray Brown, Flip Phillips, saxophonists Illinois Jacquet, Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, drummer Jo Jones, and guitarist Herb Ellis; and JATP First British Tour, 1958, signed at her portrait by Ella Fitzgerald; each wire-stitched in original pictorial wraps designed by David Stone Martin, the largest 354 x 280 mm.

The Jazz at the Philharmonic series began with a concert organised by jazz impresario Norman Granz at Los Angeles’ Philharmonic Auditorium on 2 July 1944. After several JATP concerts in Los Angeles in 1944 and 1945, Granz began producing JATP concert tours, from late fall of 1945 to 1957 in USA and Canada, and from 1952 in Europe. They featured swing and bop musicians and were among the first high-profile performances to feature racially integrated bands. Granz also insisted on integrated audiences and equal treatment for white and black artists. The ever-changing group recorded and toured extensively, with Granz producing some of the first live jam session recordings to be distributed to a wide market.