Jazz History

J.J.Johnson: MusicalInfluences and Style

Theo StojanovMcGill University

December 2001

2

J. J. Johnson(1924-2001)

Why This Man Matters

J. J. is perhaps the most influential trombonist of the 20th century. Virtually all contemporary

trombonists - both jazz and classical - are indebted to him for inspiration, for taking the

instrument away from cheap type-casting and propelling it to the foreground of musical

expression. His exploration into practically every aspect of trombone playing brought about such

innovations as:

1. Releasing the instrument from the domination of the overtone series.

2. Getting the trombone away from the restrictions of tradition: trills, triadic playing, smears,

slides, growls and other dramatic devices that eclipsed the instrument’s musical potential.

3. Putting the trombone technically on par with the trumpet and sax.

4. Refining a sustained sound with spare vibrato, a sound which has become the standard for

modern players.

5. Restructuring the harmonic vocabulary of the trombone to be consistent with the demands

of modern music.

But there is much more to this musician than his brilliant technique on the instrument. J. J. was a

composer, arranger, group leader, and an adventurous explorer of new musical possibilities. His

interest in dissonance and electro acoustic music, as well as his passion for computers and

technological innovation put him in the avant-garde of 20th century artists. Throughout his life J. J.

learned, adapted, and overcame musical barriers as a performer and a composer. His greatest

contribution is exactly that ability to learn and to expand.

J. J.’s musical history begins with black swing and the traveling ‘territory’ bands of the 1940s,

goes through the audacious development of bebop in New York City in the late 1940's, and

continues to expand until his death, embracing a wide variety of styles and instrumentat ion.

3

Musical Life and Influences

As a boy J. J. studied piano for two years before he joined his friends’ band on the bari-sax. As

with many other musicians of that time, his guru was Lester Young whose lyrical tenor-sax

improvisations gave a new direction to jazz, away from the ut ilitarian dance and mood music it

had cast itself into. Disappointed with his performance on the bari-sax, J. J. tried the trombone.

To encourage him his father bought him a used instrument from a pawn shop, and J. J. liked it so

much that he started playing in several bands and ensembles. One of those was the YMCA

marching brass band where an older trombonist encouraged him to practice and practice and

practice, even if it was for only ten minutes a day, as long as he practiced 365 days/year. Another

trombone influence was a little known musician called Fred Beckett, whose few recorded solos

impressed J. J. with their linear and lyrical sound.

After graduating from highschool J. J. played with the Clarence Love Orchestra which at one time

included Lester Young. Later he joined the Snookum Russell Orchestra and traveled with this

territory band for eight months before the group was disbanded. Returning to his home in

Indianolopis he worked as a dishwasher performing only now and again, before his friend vocalist

Earl Coleman arranged for J. J. to play a couple of sets with the Benny Carter band which was

visiting for a one night show. The band needed a trombonist, and J. J. was it.

In the mid-1940s J. J. joined the Count Basie Orchestra, which was in a prest igious position at the

time, with many show and recordings engagements on its calendar. J. J. enjoyed a better financial

situation with Count Basie, but his creative freedom was paused as he went through the motions

of big band standards. Count Basie took him to New York where J. J. decided to part with the

Orchestra in favor of the small groups which populated jazz establishments along 52nd street.

J. J. began to sit in on various sessions on “the Street” including many at Monroe’s Downbeat

Club where he played every night until its regular attraction, Coleman Hawkins returned. J. J.

fronted a quartet at the Spot lite which consisted of Bud Powell - piano, Leonard Gaskin - bass,

and Max Roach - drums. By this time his technical ability had improved considerably, and his style

4

was beginning to take on some genuine bop characteristics. J. J. often sat in with Dizzy Gillespie’s

group which also worked at the Spot lite. Once Dizzy heard J. J. practicing some sounds he’s

heard from him and Charlie Parker, and was so impressed with a kind of trombone playing he’d

never heard before, that J. J. was immediately accepted into the inner circle of boppers, and soon

recognized by other jazz musicians and as an original and innovative player. Thus he began to

bring the trombone to the forefront, alongside the trumpet and sax.

While traveling with the Snookum and Basie bands could be considered J. J.’s apprenticeship, his

formation into a developed composer/arranger/performer took place on the Street. There he met,

played, and recorded with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins,

Thelonius Monk and many many other artists who mutually influenced one another and helped

bebop grow and mature as a style.

The early 1950s were a time of change in the jazz world. Nightclubs were closing their doors as

less and less people had the time or desire to enjoy live music. Jazz took a back seat to comedy

acts and striptease shows, and even the great big bands of Dizzy and Basie began to disintegrate.

J. J. managed to find work, but the opportunities were few and far between. During this time he

toured the far east, participated in several concerts with other 52nd Street associates, and often

crossed paths with Miles Davis with whom he had developed a close friendship. J. J. was

pressured to give up working in NY clubs when his cabaret card, granting him permission to

perform, was revoked because of drug-related charges. With work becoming spare even for the

‘greats’ J. J. took up a job as a blueprint inspector at Sperry Gyroscope in Long Island to support

his family.

During this period he had time to reevaluate his musical goals, and improve his improvisation

style. When he resigned from Sperry in the mid-1950s and began playing again, his energies were

directed towards composing and arranging as well as performing. One thing that incited his return

to the stage was an award winning recording with French pianist Henry Renaud, which won an

“Oscar” by the French Jazz Academy. Perhaps J. J.’s most interesting associations of the time was

5

the Jay & Kai Quintet which was formed by the two foremost trombonists of the time, namely J.

J. and Kai Winding. In this setting J. J. had the opportunity to experiment with a completely new

sound, to compose and arrange more freely.

After the Jay & Kai Quintet, J. J. fronted several groups, constantly performing, touring abroad,

composing, and recording. From various friendships he formed during this time he collected a

group which became known as J. J. Johnson Sextet, which was considered by J. J. to be one of his

best . He continued to participate in other groups with acquaintances from the Street, appearing in

many great recordings, but his focus was shifting away from performing. He wanted to compose,

and time spent on the road meant less time writing.

Gradually J. J., although still active as a performer, gained an international reputation as a

composer. In the 1970s he decided to move from New York to Los Angeles, and to devote

himself to writing for film and television. He was subjected to compositional type-casting as most

of his assignments were “jazzy” big band themes for such films as “Cleopatra Jones” and “Shaft.”

Nevertheless his expertise was sought and he was always busy.

J. J.’s fascination with contemporary classical music began early in his career, as with many many

others, when he heard the Sacre de printemps by Igor Stravinsky. Inspired by Japanese electronic

music composer Isao Tomita’s arrangements of the Sacre and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an

Exhibition, J. J.’s own personal electroacoustic experiments remain in his private collection.

Although friends have convinced him to preserve and catalogue copies of these compositions on

CDs, J. J. continued insisting that they were not meant for anyone to listen to.

J. J.’s musical development closely paralleled the development of Jazz itself. As he matured,

turning from a trombone player to performer, to innovator, his style epitomized developments in

music so well that, in my opinion, studying J. J.’s solos today will teach one more about the

mechanics of bebop than listening to, say, Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. Without taking anything away

from Bird’s contribution to the style, J. J. who learned from Bird, in essence digested the most

1 Recorded with Benny Carter’s Orchestra in San Francisco for the Armed Forces RadioService (AFRS) in 1943.

2 Ira Gitler, Jazz Masters of the Forties, Macmillan / Da Capo, 1983

6

fundamental of bebop elements and thus made them more accessible to those who came after. His

was a productive musical career, and in the end his hard work gained him much recognition.

On Style and the Trombone

When J. J. began to revolutionize t rombone playing, he did so cautiously. After all, at the time the

trombone was not considered to be the most elegant or quick of instruments, and was allowed to

poke its head out only when its trademark special effects were needed. Even in classical music,

until the sound experiments of 20th century composers, the trombone was chained to brass choir,

heroic horn calls, or anytime the composer felt that the french horn just wouldn’t be loud enough.

Therefore J. J.’s first recorded solo on “Love for Sale1” was a strict 12 measure statement of the

original melody with only small rhythmic variations. Although his early solos were not real

improvisations, but rather variations on the main theme, J. J. took every opportunity to solo in his

desire to establish the trombone as a frontline instrument.

J. J. participated in Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic concert recording of 1944 where his

solos are st ill rooted in swing. J. J.’s playing in Body And Soul on that album, however, is

different: “its serpentine lines resemble the second chorus of tenor saxophonist Coleman

Hawkins’s 1939 recording of the title.”

By the mid-1940s J. J. was already with the Basie orchestra. His technique had improved greatly,

but the music he played in Basie’s big band afforded him little opportunity to make use of it.

“There was a time in my life, in the mid-40s, when my aim was to play as fast as physically

possible.” sais J. J. on an interview with Ira Gitler in 19832. As a matter of fact, one time when J.

J. was fronting his own group in New York, an absurdly idiotic club owner put a sign outside his

7

club which read “FASTEST TROMBONE PLAYER ALIVE!”

The trombone has been compared to the human voice, and is one of perfectly simple construction

and notoriously difficult to play properly. Johnson’s style has often been dubbed more

conservative than that of his contemporaries Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis, for example, but that

is due largely to the nature of his instrument. His improvisations were often prepared. This is

understandable, because once you play certain notes on the trombone, you’re committed to the air

chamber those notes belong to. You can’t just fake it with fast fingering and overblow, because

what will come out will sound terrible. The positions in the higher register are not very intuitive,

being clustered closely together, so that if you don’t know exactly what you’re going to play, you

might as well not play.

As mentioned previously, one of J. J.’s greatest qualities was his ability to adapt. Bird and Dizzy

had already laid the harmonic groundwork of bebop, so Johnson’s greatest concern was not one

of innovation, but one of adaptation. Music crit ics often assign J. J.’s trombone playing to the

bebop style because of his prodigious technique, seemingly without paying at tention to the

musical qualities of his playing. It is, however, these latter qualities that make him a bebop

musician: the creation of interesting music through melodic and rhythmic discontinuity.

More particularly, his melodies rely on the ascending arpeggiated chords and brief descending

scalar lines that were integral elements of Parker’s improvisational style. Another musician that

influenced Johnson to use that particular bebop device was Fats Navarro [please see fig. 1 in the

Appendix]. Arpeggiation was the most effect ive means to imply harmony, but J. J. avoided the

overuse of harmonic extensions which would have created harmonic ambiguity on the trombone

(since the harmonic series gets sharper and sharper as it goes up, and the trombone is essentially

the embodiment of that series). Hence, when improvising Johnson stayed within the underlying

changes, because the trombone sound is rich in overtones, and any harmonic extensions would not

have worked as well as with the sax or trumpet.

8

Johnson developed as a linear improviser because of his use of scalar patterns. He made extensive

use of passing tones to smooth the shape of his lines, which, again, is to accommodate for the

nature of the trombone.

On the trombone it is easier to play flat scales than sharp ones, to play arpeggios rather than

scales, and scales rather than jagged lines. One must have in mind the limits of the instrument to

be able to hide them. Such limitations apply to rhythm as well. The typical bebop grouping of

about 16 eighth-notes at a time were not suited for the trombone. To create rhythmic tension ala

bebop, J. J. could either use melodic repetition with varying accents and lengths of the melodic

motif; repeated notes - again varying accents and lengths; or modify the melodic line to

accommodate the restrictions of the instrument without sounding restricted in any way [please see

fig. 2 in the Appendix].

Overall, however, Johnson was less concerned with a varied rhythmic approach than he was with

creating a melodic line using bebop techniques.

Thus, through skill and careful breakdown of the style, Johnson mastered and became the

quintessential bebop trombonist. His ambition and talent reached further yet, into the realm of

composing and arranging.

Bibliography

Baker, David, A History of The Jazz Trombone via Recorded Solos - Transcribed andAnnotated, Maher, 1973

Bourgeois, Louis George, Jazz Trombonist J. J. Johnson: A Comprehensive Discographyand Study of the Early Evolution of his Style, Ohio State University, 1985

GMN (Global Music Network Inc.) Arts Network, Interview with J. J. (available forviewing on the web at http://www.gmn.com/artists/artist.asp?id=2040)