Ask any jazz trombonist to name the musician he most admires, and invariably the answer will be J.J. Johnson-not only because Johnson is a brilliantly creative soloist and a remarkable technician, but also because no jazz trombonist who came after him could fail to take account of Johnson`s innovations.
Indeed, the history of the jazz trombone can be neatly divided into pre-and post-Johnson eras; for when he emerged in the mid-1940s to demonstrate that the instrument could be played with the same kind of facility that Dizzy Gillespie brought to the trumpet and Charlie Parker to the alto saxophone, the richly varied tonal shadings of such pre-Johnson masters as Dickie Wells, Tricky Sam Nanton and Trummy Young almost automatically became a part of the past.
It can be argued that Johnson`s streamlining of the jazz trombone involved losses as well as gains, even though the changes he wrought were inevitable and carried out with such panache that there can be no doubt that Johnson is the instrument`s modern master.
But where, one wonders, has this master been in recent years?
Certainly not in the clubs, because when Johnson`s new group comes to the Jazz Showcase this Wednesday through next Sunday, it will be the first time he has performed in Chicago since 1961-when he played at the Sutherland Lounge as a sideman in a short-lived version of the Miles Davis Sextet. And not in the record bins either; in the last two decades, only one new Johnson album has appeared.
Instead, since 1970, Johnson has been in the studios-not the kind in which jazz recordings are made, but the film and television studios of Hollywood, where he has been writing scores for such shows as ”Mod Squad,”
”That Girl” and ”Starsky and Hutch.”
”My wife and I,” Johnson says, ”had been living in New York for a number of years, and by 1970 we felt the need for a dramatic change. I had been flirting for quite a while with the idea of getting into film
composition, and I had just come back from Europe and felt a little weary of the road when I ran into Quincy Jones, who was in New York to record a film score.
”I was playing in the band, and after the date, Quincy told me that if I wanted to come out to Los Angeles and try to break into film-scoring, he would put in a good word for me. So we moved to L.A. and, with the help of Quincy and Lalo Schifrin, I began to get fairly busy.”
Johnson already had impressive credentials as a composer and an arranger, having created such works as ”Poem for Brass,” ”Perceptions,” ”Sketch for Trombone and Orchestra” and ”El Camino Real.”
But those were major orchestral statements, not background music. So how did Johnson adjust to the relatively anonymous role of the film and TV composer?
”Well,” Johnson says, ”I did get a measure of satisfaction out of it, a satisfaction that was different from the kind you get from playing.
”Film scoring is a very lonely job for the most part. You go to a little, dark screening room; you watch the picture with the director and the associate producer and decide where music should and should not go; and then you go home and stare at the wall until a thought is finally triggered and you`re able to develop it.
”The process is very challenging, and it can be very rewarding, too-especially when you walk onto the sound stage, give the downbeat to the orchestra and get to hear your baby come to life. But I`ve come to realize that there`s nothing like the live audience.”
So Johnson, who thinks of his life as a series of ”cyclical happenings,” decided that it was time to make another big change.
He has written new music and formed a new quintet, which includes pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Rufus Reid, drummer Victor Lewis and a newcomer from Bloomington, Ind., saxophonist Tom Gullion. And as though he wished to make things even more dramatic, Johnson also is leaving Los Angeles to settle in Indianapolis-where he was born 63 years ago, and from whence he will now sally forth on national and international tours.
In the 1930s, Indianapolis was visited by a number of so-called
”territory bands,”which seldom rose to national acclaim, even though some of them were excellent. And in one of them, Harlan Leonard`s Kansas City Rockets, there was a trombonist named Fred Beckett who would turn J.J. Johnson`s life around.
”Not too many people know about Fred Beckett,” Johnson says, ”because he never made a big noise as far as jazz notoriety is concerned. But he was a primary influence on me, the first person I heard who could really articulate on the trombone.
”Then there was Lester Young, not a trombonist but a tenor saxophonist. There was something about Lester Young that affected me and a lot of people, too. And the same thing happened later on, when I heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie-because in the music of all these people there was an element that transcended their instruments.
”What I`m talking about can be summed up in one word: lyricism. And that`s how I tried to play-in a lyrical, linear, flowing manner.”
Johnson left Indianapolis in 1942 with Snookum Russell`s band, which included one of the future giants of bebop, trumpeter Fats Navarro, and then worked with Benny Carter (”witnessing the totality of his musicianship,”
Johnson recalls, ”was a marvelous opportunity”) and Count Basie, with whom he made his first notable recordings.
But bebop was small-group music, so Johnson left the Basie band to form a quartet (with Bud Powell on piano) and, in 1946, made his first recordings under his own name. (”They were,” critic Ira Gitler recalls, ”soon in the hands of every young trombonist.”)
His solo prowess growing by leaps and bounds, Johnson was a fully mature virtuoso by the end of the 1940s-having already made more classic recordings
(under his own name and with the likes of Parker, Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt) than most jazz musicians produce in their lifetimes.
But Johnson had always been prone to self-criticism (”I go through periods,” he says, ”when I don`t seem to be doing what I set out do”), and in 1952 he left the jazz scene behind to work for two years as a blueprint inspector-hoping ”to re-evaluate the situation in general, not to mention the way it related to myself. I find it helpful sometimes to do that and then come back with a new slant.”
That new slant turned out to be one of the most popular groups of the 1950s, Jay & Kai (”Kai” was Johnson`s frontline partner, trombonist Kai Winding). Then, after Jay & Kai had run its course, Johnson formed a series of impressive quintets and sextets that included such players as Freddie Hubbard, Clifford Jordan and Nat Adderley-until, once again feeling the need to make a change, he left jazz for the West Coast and film work.
”I did some minimal studio playing during that 17-year period,” Johnson says, ”but not much jazz. And except for some isolated situations, I made no live appearances as a jazz artist. But even though I was involved in composing and arranging, it wasn`t difficult for me to get back to full-time playing when I decided to do that.
”I`m pretty much of a practice-aholic, and I kept the trombone right at the edge of my desk. Whenever I wanted to take a break from writing, I would pick up the horn.
”And now that I`m about to play in public once more, I truly feel rejuvenated-because jazz played to nobody is no jazz. It`s a music that lives in the ears and hearts and minds of those who behold it; and I`m ready to speak to them again.”
