Premier Exponent of Jazz Trombone

The death of J. J. Johnson by self-inflicted gunshot wound has not only ended the life of the greatest jazz exponent of his instrument, the slide trombone, but also erodes one of the few remaining links to the formative era of modern jazz. Johnson emerged from a basic grounding in swing to establish himself as the undisputed premier voice on trombone in the bebop era, and invented a new language for the instrument in the process.

There had been great players before him, notably Jack Teagarden, while Johnson himself expressed an early admiration for Fred Beckett, a trombonist who played with Harlan Leonard and Lionel Hampton, Trummy Young, and J. C. Higginbotham among the older school. Attention tended to focus on Johnson