Shel Silverstein, A1A near East Martello, Key West, 1978. Photos by Lawson Corbett Little.

Lawson Corbett Little was born in Chicago in 1945 and studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design and the California Institute of the Arts. For much of the past 20 years, he has lived in Nashville, photographing country music stars like Dwight Yoakam and Hank Williams III. In the 1970s and 1980s Little lived in Key West, where he helped establish the photography program at Florida Keys Community College and photographed notable authors and musicians including James Merrrill and Thomas McGuane (see earlier post), Jimmy Buffett, Philip Caputo, and David Allan Coe. The images above are among hundreds Little produced of Shel Silverstein, the inestimably talented writer, artist, and musician whose A Light in the Attic spent two years on the bestseller list of The New York Times, and who penned songs for Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and Emmylou Harris. More than 40 of Little's photographs of Silverstein, and dozens more of other 1970s Key West denizens, can be seen on this page of Little's new website. A contemporary set of playwright Tennessee Williams, accepting cocktail below, can be found here.

Tennessee Williams, Key West, ca. 1979. Photo by Lawson Corbett Little.