Johnson, J.J. [James Louis]

(b Indianapolis, 22 Jan 1924). American jazz trombonist and composer. He studied the piano between the ages of nine and eleven with a church organist, and took up the trombone when he was 14. In 1941–2 he toured with bands led by Clarence Love and Isaac Snookum Russell, whose trumpeter Fats Navarro had a strong impact on Johnson’s playing. He then began an important engagement with Benny Carter’s orchestra (1942–5), touring the USA, writing a few arrangements and making numerous radio broadcasts and transcriptions. His earliest recorded solo was on Love for Sale (1943, Cap.) and he appeared at the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert (1944).

By May 1945 Johnson was with the Count Basie Orchestra, mostly in New York. He moved permanently to New York in mid-1946, and for the next few years played small-group jazz at various clubs with Bud Powell, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Navarro, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others, becoming increasingly absorbed in the new bop style. In 1951 he toured Korea, Japan and the South Pacific for the United Service Organizations in a band under Oscar Pettiford, and during 1952 he toured with an all-star group that included Davis. However, his worsening financial situation forced him to retire from music in August 1952; he worked as a blueprint inspector at the Sperry Gyroscope Company, and performed only sporadically.

Then, in August 1954, Johnson formed a highly successful trombone duo with Kai Winding. Their group, called Jay and Kai, remained intact until 1956, bringing Johnson’s work to a larger audience and establishing his reputation as the leading black American jazz trombonist. His Poem for Brass (also known as Jazz Suite for Brass), recorded for Columbia in 1956, drew attention to his talents as a composer: many of his skilfully orchestrated works employ fugal passages and out-of-tempo chorales as well as more conventional jazz swing sections.

After disbanding Jay and Kai, Johnson led his own quintet until summer 1960, touring Europe and composing large-scale works such as El camino real and Sketch for Trombone and Band, which were first performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1959. He taught at the Lenox School of Jazz in summer 1960, and in the following year wrote a new major work, Perceptions, for Gillespie.

Johnson continued to combine careers as a performer and composer throughout the 1960s. He played with Davis’s group (1961–2), formed a new quartet of his own (1963) and led a sextet, which included Clark Terry and Sonny Stitt, on a tour of Japan (1964). By 1967 he was staff composer and conductor for MBA Music in New York. From 1970, when he moved to Los Angeles, he primarily wrote scores for television and films; his infrequent recordings and performances, however, invariably re-established his pre-eminence among jazz trombonists. In 1987 he returned to Indianapolis and became more active as a player.

Johnson is the most important postwar jazz trombonist and a major influence on all players of the instrument. His earliest recorded solos up to 1945 reveal a thick tone, aggressive manner and impressive mobility. They are not yet far removed, though, from the solos of his early influences – Lester Young, Roy Eldridge and the trombonist Fred Beckett, who emphasized the linear qualities of the instrument rather than the effects of the slide.

During the 1940s Johnson developed such an astounding technical facility that some record reviewers insisted, erroneously, that he played a valve trombone; the speed of his playing and the clarity and accuracy he achieved at fast tempos have never been surpassed. In 1947 he began to play with a lighter tone (occasionally enhanced by a felt mute) and reserved vibrato for special effects. The result was a rather dry but attractive sound resembling that of a french horn. Johnson also worked diligently at this period to adapt bop patterns to the trombone, and his solos suffer from an emphasis on speed and an overreliance on memorized formulas incorporating such bop trademarks as the flattened 5th. His performances on both versions of Crazeology with Charlie Parker (1947, Dial) begin with the same phrase and contain other whole phrases in common. The same is true of the two renditions of Johnson’s celebrated solo on Blue Mode (1949, NewJ), despite their very different tempos.

During the late 1950s Johnson’s playing matured: he relied less on formulas and speed, and more on a scalar approach and motivic development. Recordings of live performances dating from this time provide examples of brilliant developmental sequences that were delivered with powerful emotion. The features of Johnson’s mature style are well illustrated inex.1 (from Mack the Knife, 1961, Col.), where the opening phrase is a rhythmicized version of Kurt Weill’s theme and the rest of the chorus is built in the modal manner from a single scale, connecting without a break to the next chorus.

WORKS

(selective list)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Harrison: ‘Some Early J.J. Johnson Recordings’, JJ, xii/10 ( 1959), 6, 10 only

I. Gitler: ‘The Remarkable J.J. Johnson’, Down Beat, xxviii/10 (1961), 17–19

G. Schuller: J.J. Johnson: a List of Compositions Licensed by B.M.I. (New York, 1961)

M. Harrison: ‘“Perceptions” and a Question of Unity’, JazzM, viii/5 (1962), 25 only

G. Hoefer: ‘Early J.J.’, Down Beat, xxxii/2 (1965), 16, 33 only

J. Burns: ‘J.J. Johnson: the Formative Years’, JJ, xxviii/8 (1975), 4–7

D. Baker: J.J. Johnson, Trombone (New York, 1979) [transcrs.; incl. discography and list of works]

M. Hennessey: ‘The Return of J.J. Johnson’, JJI, xxxiii/5 (1980), 6–7

G. Kalbacher: ‘J.J. Johnson: Bringing it all back Home’, Down Beat, lv/3 (1988), 16–19 [incl. discography]

J. Berrett and L. Bourgois: The Musical World of J.J. Johnson (Lanham, MD, 1999)

LEWIS PORTER