Tracy Sugarman (American 1921-2013) West Mobile Social Club Wax Crayon and Gouache on gessoed board Signed (lower left) 38 x 54cm (14¾ x 21¼ in.) Unframed Together with two other works by the same hand The Swing Diva (unframed); The Singer (unframed) (3) American illustrator, Tracy Sugarman, had a career which spanned more than fifty years and encompassed books, articles and record covers. He was also well known for documenting some of the most momentous events in American history including Mississippi's Freedom Summer of 1964, one of the milestones in the civil rights movement. Sugarman spent ten weeks chronicling the actions of students and activists in their attempts to register as many African-American voters in the state of Mississippi as possible. In the course of his work, he came to know veteran activists Fannie Lou Hamer and Charles McLaurin and went on to write two books about his experiences: Stranger at the Gates, 1966 and We had Sneakers, They had Guns published in 2009. He also covered the conditions in the Rikers Island Jail for the New York Times and the trial of Malcolm X for the Saturday Evening Post. The present group of works focusses on Sugarman's work for the music industry. Between 1954 and 1959, he produced more than one hundred album covers for the label Grand Award and was immensely grateful for the artistic freedom afforded him: "I had been able to explore every medium from scratch-board to oils, from pastels to watercolors and seen them reproduced. I had captured Mahalia Jackson singing gospel and Knuckles O'Toole playing ragtime piano." Tracy Sugarman, in Drawing Conclusions: An artist discovers his America, New York, 2007. It marked the beginning of a lifelong love affair with jazz and many further projects and collaborations.