Results for "J.J. Johnson"

Jimmy Heath: Love Letter

by Chris May
July 3, 2020

Love Letter is the final album to be made by saxophonist Jimmy Heath, who passed in January 2020 aged 93. It was completeted just a month earlier. The title is well chosen: the album is a love letter to jazz, a love letter to ballads, and a love letter to Heath's surviving family members, friends and ...

Sex & Drugs & Jazz & Jive: Top Ten Stash Records Albums

by Chris May
June 16, 2020

With all the transgressive flair you would expect of bohemian New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, Bernie Brightman's Stash Records made its name with a hugely entertaining series of sex and drugs-themed compilations of swing-era recordings. The first was Reefer Songs in 1976. But Brightman's legacy extends much further. There was a finite amount ...

Joe Fielder's Big Sackbut: Live In Graz

by Dan McClenaghan
June 6, 2020

Trombonist Joe Fielder offers up Joe Fielder's Big Sackbut--Live In Graz, the group's second recording, a follow-up to the 2012 eponymous Yellow Sound Label debut and 2013's Sackbut Stomp (Multiphonics Music). The line-up is three trombones (Ryan Keberle, Luis Bonilla and Fielder) and a tuba (Jon Sass), so it isn't hard to imagine what the sound ...

Geoff Mason: GMQ

by Jack Bowers
May 30, 2020

Geoff Mason, one of the UK's leading jazz trombonists, mans the front line by himself on the slyly named GMQ, an eloquent quartet session from which Mason's longtime colleague, the outstanding saxophonist Simon Spillett, is regrettably missing. As nothing can be done to set that right, best to focus on the music at hand, which binds ...

Riverside Records: An Alternative Top Ten

by Chris May
May 27, 2020

From 1953, when it was set up, to 1964, when it was acquired by ABC, Riverside Records rivalled Blue Note and Prestige as one of the leading independent jazz labels based in New York City. The founders of all three labels were jazz fans who operated on slim margins and became producers partly because they enjoyed ...

Sencalar/Glassman Quintet: Realization

by Hrayr Attarian
April 13, 2020

Altin Sencalar and Chris Glassman were classmates in graduate school at Michigan State University (MSU) where they were both trombonist MIchael Dease's proteges. When they decided to release their debut, the exciting Realization, their mentor produced the record, contributed a tune and made a guest appearance on the opening track. For this bop-based session ...

Take Five with Andy Clausen

by AAJ Staff
February 26, 2020

Meet Andy Clausen Andy Clausen is a New York-based trombonist, composer, and educator. A graduate of The Juilliard School, he currently serves as Artistic Director for Jazz at New York Youth Symphony. Clausen is also a founding member of The Westerlies, an award winning new music brass chamber ensemble. From Carnegie Hall to Coachella, The Westerlies ...

Paul Dunlea's 4 Corners at Maggie's Farm

by Ian Patterson
February 5, 2020

Paul Dunlea's 4 Corners Maggie's Farm Dromara, N. Ireland January 27, 2020 When you consider that some Belfast venues might struggle to get forty punters for a Monday night jazz gig, it is no mean feat that as many have turned out, in the middle of the Irish countryside no ...

BIG January Birthday Salutes!

by Marc Cohn
January 31, 2020

BIG, I mean BIG January birthday salutes on Gifts & Messages this week: 120th birth anniversary for trombonists Juan Tizol and Wilbur De Paris; 110th for Django Reinhardt; 100th for vocalist Betty Roché and saxophonist Jimmy Forrest; 90th for saxophonist Jack Nimitz, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and pianist/vibraphonist Buddy Montgomery. And special birthday greetings to bassist Eberhard ...

J.J. Johnson

Born: January 22, 1924

Considered by many to be the finest jazz trombonist of all time, J.J. Johnson somehow transferred the innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to his more awkward instrument, playing with such speed and deceptive ease that at one time some listeners assumed he was playing valve (rather than slide) trombone! Johnson toured with the territory bands of Clarence Love and Snookum Russell during 1941-42 and then spent 1942-45 with Benny Carter's big band.

He made his recording debut with Carter (taking a solo on "Love for Sale" in 1943) and played at the first JATP concert (1944). Johnson also had led plenty of solo space during his stay with Count Basie's Orchestra (1945-46). During 1946-50, he played with all of the top bop musicians including Charlie Parker (with whom he recorded in 1947), the Dizzy Gillespie big band, Illinois Jacquet (1947-49) and the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool Nonet.His own recordings from the era included such sidemen as Bud Powell and a young Sonny Rollins. J.J., who also recorded with the Metronome All-Stars, played with Oscar Pettiford (1951) and Miles Davis (1952) but then was outside of music, working as a blueprint inspector for two years (1952-54).