J.J. Johnson commits suicide at age 77


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Posted by Erik on February 05, 2001 at 22:58:49:

We have lost another one of the greats, and he will be greatly missed, both for his music and his warm personality . . .

From CDNOW

J.J. Johnson, the most influential trombonist in jazz history, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Indianapolis on Sunday (Feb. 4). Johnson, who was 77, had been suffering from prostate cancer and other irreversible health problems.

Johnson's professional career stretched from the swing era, through the bebop revolution, and into the jazz-classical crossover movement known as the Third Stream. Equally wide-ranging and significant were Johnson's musical associations, a who's who of modern jazz that included Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Clifford Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Benny Carter, Stan Getz, and many others.

"It was profound, the way J.J. played, it was profound," says trombonist Steve Turre. "Just like the way Coltrane played, it went to the deepest source. Things like that, you can't really define them with words."

With an astonishingly clean, sharp tone, Johnson, essentially single-handedly, brought the trombone into the technically-demanding bebop arena, and erased popular notions of the instrument as a playful, even clownish novelty.

"J.J. did for the trombone what Charlie Parker did for the saxophone," continues Turre. "And all of us that are playing today wouldn't be playing the way we're playing if it wasn't for what he did. And not only, of course, is he the master of the trombone -- the definitive master of this century -- but, as a composer and arranger, he is in the top shelf as well."

James Louis Johnson was born in Indianapolis, Jan. 22, 1924. He learned to play piano at age 11, and picked up the trombone at 14. With only his experience from the Crispus Attucks High School band under his belt, Johnson soon turned professional, and in 1942 joined Snookum Russell's "territory" swing orchestra. A several-year stint with Carter followed, then two years in the Basie band, and assorted gigs with Gillespie, Parker, Illinois Jacquet, Woody Herman, and Oscar Pettiford. Johnson was part of the expanded Miles Davis ensemble that appeared on epochal Davis album The Birth of the Cool.

After an early-'50s hiatus (where he worked inspecting blueprints at a Sperry factory near New York), Johnson joined up with fellow trombonist Kai Winding in 1954 to form one of the most appealing acts in post-bop jazz, Jay and Kai. After he split with Winding, Johnson became better known as a composer. Johnson wrote the blue-hued jazz standard "Lament," but also immersed himself in more ambitious compositions. Among Johnson's best-known Third Stream projects is his "Poem for Brass," which he recorded under the aegis of classical composer-conductor Gunther Schuller, for the 1956 album Music for Brass.

After leading various groups through the 1960s, and recording for the Columbia, Blue Note, Impulse!, RCA, and A&M labels, Johnson moved to Los Angeles, where his jazz activities were combined with composing music for film and television. Johnson's scores and themes were heard in the films Shaft, Across 110th St., and Cleopatra Jones, as well as TV shows The Mod Squad, The Six Million Dollar Man, That Girl, and Starsky and Hutch.

After making relatively few albums in the '70s and '80s, Johnson returned to recording with two live sets on Antilles Records. (He returned to his native Indianapolis at around this time as well.) Shortly thereafter, however, Johnson's wife, Vivian, suffered a stroke, and Johnson reduced his musical activities in order to take care of her. Vivian Johnson died in 1991 and J.J. Johnson returned to recording in 1993. Johnson recorded a series of critically hailed albums for Verve in the '90s, but played his last concert in Nov. 1996, at New Jersey's William Patterson College. He officially retired in 1997.

"Before I knew him as a man, I loved him for his music," says Steve Turre. "Once I knew him as a man, I loved him as a human being, because he was such a wonderful, warm person, and so respectful of all people and a real king in every sense of the word. He was royalty."

Johnson is survived by his second wife, Carolyn Johnson; his sons William and Kevin Johnson; his sister, Rosemary Belcher; his granddaughter, Kenya Johnson; stepdaughter, Mikita Sanders; and step-granddaughter, Mytiya Sanders. A wake is planned 11:00-1:00 PM Saturday (Feb. 10) in Indianapolis at Witherspoon Presbyterian Church, 5136 N. Michigan Road, Indianapolis. The funeral will follow.


-- Drew Wheeler



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