James P. Johnson

James P. Johnson at the piano around 1921.

James Price Johnson , James P. Johnson or Jimmy Johnson , (born February 1, 1894 in New Brunswick , New Jersey , † November 17, 1955 in New York , NY ) was an American pianist and composer . He is considered the "father of the Stride piano " and in this capacity has significantly influenced a number of other jazz pianists , including Fats Waller , Duke Ellington , Count Basie , Don Lambert and Thelonious Monk .

Life

childhood

James P. Johnson grew up as the youngest of five children. Formative musical impressions of his childhood were the ring shouts organized by his parents, which Johnson listened to late into the night, and his mother's piano playing, from whom he learned his first piano piece, "Little Brown Jug". When the family moved to Jersey City in 1902 and his mother had to sell the piano in order to be able to pay the relocation costs, the young James P. was hanging around bars and pubs, where he became the ragtime pianist because of her piano key skills and women called ticklers , listened, and made a few coins playing guitar, singing, and dancing. It was during this time that his first quarter-paid job as a pianist fell, which he did in a brothel, but which, according to Johnson, did not count. In addition, through an older brother, Johnson made the acquaintance of some ticklers who stopped in Jersey City on their way from Baltimore or Alabama to New York.

In symphony concerts, which he attended in New York from 1905 , Johnson trained his orchestral sound ideas, while the classical-romantic piano music in the cafés in Harlem imparted pianistic virtuosity to him. He decided to make a living as a tickler.

Ragtime pianist

From around 1911 Johnson played in various cabarets and clubs in alternation with other pianists, from whom he listened to many contemporary playing methods, harmonic progressions, improvisation patterns, melody figures and personal characteristics, with which he continued to develop his personal style on the basis of Eastern Ragtime . He himself saw the real start of his career in 1913. If Johnson had many current hits of the day in his repertoire by then, he now began to work out his first ragtimes. Although a publisher expressed interest in Johnson's music, there were no publications during this period, as Johnson was not yet able to write sheet music and could not find anyone to write his pieces down for him. It was not until the 1940s that some of his rags were published in print, but mostly in a shortened form, for example "Gut Stomp": probably composed between 1914 and 1917, then the prototypical sheet music publication in 1940, right up to the improvisationally much more developed version as a sound recording ( Blue Note 24-B, November 17, 1943). Encouraged by a friend's mother, he was systematically instructed by Bruto Giannini in harmony, counterpoint and piano playing from 1913 onwards, and was also introduced to the meaning and methodology of classical piano fingering for the first time. Johnson continued his forays into the cabarets and bars of Harlem to listen to other pianists and met some of New York's best "ticklers": Luckey Roberts , Eubie Blake and Willie The Lion Smith . Under their influence he acquired the ability to play in all keys with the same ease and virtuosity, a skill that is particularly in demand when accompanying singers. From 1914 on, the composition of songs took a broader place in Johnson's life. After he had learned to write music in the meantime, he started contributing songs for musical shows. With these foundations, Johnson soon became one of New York's finest ragtime pianists. In the following years Johnson expanded his musical activities, took up his first piano role (1917) and published a composition for the first time. In the period up to 1920, Johnson traveled to various states and took every opportunity to continue his musical education. In 1920 he made the acquaintance of George Gershwin , who took up piano roles like Johnson. During this time he became the best pianist in New York, who had the reputation of being unbeatable in cutting contests and rent parties and actively defending his position.

Stride piano

1921 was a particularly significant year for James P. Johnson. He recorded piano roles for QRS, including his masterpiece “Carolina Shout” (which he had already recorded on a role in 1918). After this piano role, both Fats Waller and Duke Ellington learned the initial piece of the Harlem Stride piano. In addition, the first record was produced with Johnson that year ("Harlem Strut" on the Black Swan label ) and he met the 17-year-old Thomas Waller, whom he met after the unexpected death of his mother Adeline († 1920) and after Whose expulsion by Waller's very religious father Edward, family and musically under his wing, and comprehensively instructed in classically sound jazz piano playing. Johnson was a busy man in the 1920s. In addition to his engagements for QRS, he was in his capacity as musical director of the touring revue Plantation Days in England in 1923, he recorded records and wrote the music for two successful Broadway shows, 1923 Runnin 'Wild (from which the two standards " Old Fashioned Love ”and“ Charleston ”) and 1928“ Keep Shufflin '”(together with Fats Waller). He has also composed numerous songs, including the classic “If I Could Be with You One Hour Tonight”. He also turned to composing orchestral works, of which “Yamekraw” was premiered in 1928 with Fats Waller as a soloist. From 1927 onwards, Johnson increasingly focused on recordings as a source of income. It was during this time that his legendary accompaniments from singers such as Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith , the “Empress of the Blues”, especially her “Backwater Blues” , fall .

composer

In the early 1930s, however, Johnson concentrated on Broadway . While "Sugar Hill" was not very successful, the show "Harlem Hotcha", on which he cooperated with Andy Razaf (text) and Don Redman (musical director), went much better. In the Great Depression , opportunities for recordings and thus the income that one could earn as a recording artist became increasingly scarce. Johnson withdrew to a large extent from Harlem's nightlife and dealt again with music theory and the composition of extensive orchestral works. A symphony, a suite and a piano concerto were created during the depression period. In later years a ballet, an opera, sonatas and a symphonic poem were added.

Later years

James P. Johnson, Fess Williams , Freddie Moore, Joe Thomas 1948.
Photograph by William P. Gottlieb .

With the newly awakened interest in older jazz styles, Johnson's second career as a jazz pianist began in 1938: initially as a sideman in various bands, he was in the famous (recorded and re-released) Carnegie Hall concert From Spirituals to Swing (Part 2 followed a year later) on December 23, 1938 with two piano solos. Directly afterwards, on December 24, 1938, at Havers Studios in New York, an interview with Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress was made , for which Johnson, who is not very talkative and generally appears to be rather humble, wrongly called Lomax as a "blues singer (as well as Pianist, speaker) from Kansas City, Missouri ". In addition to recording a biographical monologue with the sound archive title "Monologue on early life" on the piano, as well as in dialogue with Lomax, Johnson recorded a total of seven musical titles for the sound archive. From this archive selection, only the single track “Pork And Beans” (composer: Luckey Roberts) has so far been published on CD (Document Records). The other six archive titles are "Stop It, Joe", "Blues", "The Bull Diker's Dream", "Ethel Waters Blues", "Low Down Blues", as well as the one by Alan Lomax most likely erroneously called "Snowy Water Blues" recorded "Snowy Morning Blues". Although James P. Johnson had to struggle with a series of strokes from 1940 onwards, which repeatedly forced him to take longer breaks, he was able to continue recording as a soloist and sideman in various formations until 1949. The death of his friend Fats Waller in 1943 had already plunged Johnson into a deep personal crisis, which he tried to overcome by recording a memorial album with pieces by Waller. The health problems made speaking more and more difficult for him, but his piano playing seems to have remained largely unaffected. In 1951, however, a massive stroke ended his career for good. Johnson, who was paralyzed and in need of care for the last few years of his life and who received an early obituary in DownBeat magazine in 1954, died in Queens Hospital in New York from the effects of another, eighth stroke. Only 75 people gave him the final escort.

style

James P. Johnson's personal piano style is based on Eastern Ragtime and its individual characteristics in the playing of individual pianists, whose most important representatives Eubie Blake and Luckey Roberts were Johnson's closest friends. Together with elements from various currents of the blues, the romantic piano tradition (virtuosity, full-bodied chords), influences from orchestral music (polyphony in both hands using a differentiated touch culture) and numerous elements from other ticklers, Johnson formed the piano style, known as the Harlem Stride Piano or Stride Piano for short . By formulating a vocabulary of pianistic motifs that every Stride pianist mastered and incorporated into his improvisations, he assumed a key position in the development of the jazz piano. Johnson's own style, however, could not be reduced to typical phrases and motifs (in contrast to Fats Waller's style, which often uses a store of motifs and phrases that is characteristic of him). Johnson's style was stuck to the classic stride piano all his life, in which the left hand controls the rhythm taken over from ragtime with single notes, octaves or decimals in the low register on the heavy bar parts (the one and the three ) and chords in the middle register on the unstressed Time parts (the two and four ) plays while the right hand plays the melody and often enough other voices as well as highly virtuoso decorations (exemplified in “Crying for the Carolines” from 1930). Johnson himself likes to break through the typical pattern, especially in his left hand, and varies the sequence from one-bar to two-bar units with a shift in focus. He also escapes the monotony that can quickly set in when playing the left hand, occasionally through choruses with half-bar, wide-ranging chords instead of the ragtime rhythm or the shift of the melody into the left hand, to which the right hand then plays the harmonies. Since Johnson was an immensely creative musician, there are few typical elements in his style, such as chromatic passage tones or octaves when repeating a molded part. Probably the most characteristic element in Johnson's right-hand playing is an often percussive attack on chords, which Johnson contrasts with a whole range of differentiated attacking techniques. The resulting sound sets Johnson apart from other Stride pianists of his generation. Johnson adapted his style to changing public tastes without ever giving up his basics. The extensive and orchestral elements of his playing faded more and more into the background in the thirties and were partly replaced or supplemented by more linear melodies, tonal economy and more modern phrasing, whereby Johnson came closer to the developments of the swing era. His playing after 1945 seems a bit more open and elegant than in the course of the 1920s.

Recordings

James P. Johnson's recording career began in 1917 with the first piano roles and lasted until 1949, the year in which he made his last records. From 1921 Johnson played on the latter medium as a soloist, accompanist for blues singers, band leader and as a sideman in the formations of other jazz musicians. The preserved sound he left behind documents his roots in Eastern Ragtime (the first piano roles) as well as his achievements in developing the style of the Harlem Stride Piano (the first records), but not the actual process of change from ragtime to stride between 1918 and 1921, as none from this period Recordings of Johnson exist. “Carolina Shout” from 1921 may be the first recorded jazz piano solo. The record hit the charts in January 1922.

The records Johnson made in the 1920s give a good overview of his skills as a stride pianist, blues pianist and accompanist. They show that stride piano was (and is) both a genre of its own and a playing technique, since Johnson's recordings of blues titles ("Backwater Blues", "Snowy Morning Blues") and hits ("Crying for the Carolines ”) uses stride elements, although they are not stride compositions. His classic solo recordings were made by 1931; in addition to the titles already mentioned, these are "Keep off the Grass" and "Harlem Strut" (1921), "Riffs", "Jingles", "You've Got to Be Modernistic" (1930 ). Two piano duets with Clarence Williams from 1931 document the ability of the Ticklers to entertain themselves while playing the piano, even if this is a form of entertainment with comical texts. From 1938 Johnson took on records with small combos again. Between 1940 and 1949 he made numerous piano solo recordings, including some remakes of earlier titles that document the development of his style. As a band pianist, Johnson benefited from his stylistic and technical abilities, although in a band he did not always have to play the stride rhythm with his left hand. When no bass was occupied (as in the recordings of Perry Bradford's Jazz Phools from 1925) he could replace the rhythm section of a band with his left hand, but when a complete rhythm section was involved, Johnson liked to concentrate on the right hand (as exemplified in his “Victory Stride” from 1944). Recordings that Johnson made under his name have been re-released on the Classics label .

Johnson as a composer

James P. Johnson wanted to be remembered as a composer of classical works who integrated jazz and blues into larger classical-symphonic forms. After studying with Giannini, he studied late romantic harmony, instrumentation, counterpoint and composition on his own in the 1920s. In the 1930s he tried to deepen his knowledge of music theory and composition, for which he applied twice (1937 and 1942) for Guggenheim Fellowships for financial support and institutional foundation of his compositions, but was unsuccessful. Not least because of his roots in jazz, Johnson felt a strong social difference from other artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Therefore, he tried to win established authors like Langston Hughes as librettists and advocates for his works, as he had little contact with the "classical" music business in New York due to his lack of academic training and therefore received little support for his compositions.

His rhapsody Yamekraw for piano and orchestra, composed in 1927, was the first work, followed by two symphonies ( Harlem Symphony 1932, Symphony in Brown 1935), a piano concerto ( Jassamine Concerto , also piano concerto in A flat major 1934), two piano sonatas and an opera De Organizers , symphonic poems (especially African Drums ) and the American Symphonic Suite . In addition, Johnson has composed a number of smaller works. Yamekraw was inspired by Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and represents Johnson's first attempt at composing authentic American art music based on African traditions. In this composition there are elements of jazz, ragtime, spiritual and blues as basic design elements. However, Yamekraw as a whole cannot be directly assigned to any of these genres. Instead of using a theme of its own, Johnson decided to use a mix of different blues and spiritual themes, which then also brought the work the criticism of simply forcing popular melodies into a classically-romantically inspired form, from which one Little developing, small-scale structure resulted. Nevertheless, Yamekraw was very successful and saw numerous performances well into the 1940s.

African Drums (also simply called Drums ) represents another attempt at composing Afro-American music. As in the third movement of his Harlem Symphony , Baptist Mission , Johnson essentially uses the variation technique. Two central themes are contrasted with contrapuntal motifs in seven variations. Here, too, the direct jazz quote is not in the foreground, but the processing of rhythmic-melodic elements from the ragtime and the stride piano, which are repeatedly contrasted with pure rhythmic sections of the percussion.

While some of Johnson's works are incomplete and therefore either not at all or only appear suitable for publication and performance with a very high level of contextualising effort, only individual movements from larger works were published during Johnson's lifetime. The Harlem Symphony , the Jazz A Mine piano concerto , a single movement from the American Symphonic Suite and African Drums have been preserved in full . These works were recorded on CD by the conductor Marin Alsop with the Concordia Orchestra, the piano solo parts were played by the pianist Leslie Stifelman.

No recordings were made of Johnson's orchestral works in which he participated. Only of his (lost) fantasy Yamekraw , of the orchestral work Drums and of the second movement of his piano concerto (as Blues for Jimmy ) are there heavily abridged piano versions that Johnson recorded for the Asch label in 1944/45 .

meaning

Johnson's importance for the development of popular music can easily be seen in the effect of his piece "Charleston", but it is only initially recognized in literature. His importance as a jazz pianist is often reduced to his function as the "father of the stride piano". On the one hand, this is because Johnson never achieved the great popularity of Fats Waller (represented by no manager or publisher, Johnson was left to his own devices), and on the other hand, it is because his musical activities were so diverse that he himself not marketed - and judged - based on an easy-to-understand category. Statements by other musicians show, however, that Johnson had an enormous reputation in music circles and that his activities were very well recognized. Duke Ellington admired Johnson and cited him as a major influence and source of inspiration:

“And how I learned it !. Yes, this was the most solid foundation for me. "

“And how I learned it! ... Yes, that was the most solid foundation for me. "

“Those doors flew open. Lights switched on. Cupboards emptied, and everybody took a little taste. Then it was me, or maybe Fats, who sat down to warm up the piano. After that, James took over. Then you got real invention - magic, sheer magic. "

“Doors flew open. Lights came on. Closets were emptied and everyone had one. Then it was me, or Fats, who sat down and played the piano a little warm. Then James took over. Then you got real inspiration - magic, pure magic. "

Johnson's importance as a composer of serious music takes second place as a jazz musician. The reasons for this are to be found in the lack of support both for his compositional training and for the performance of his works by well-known orchestras and conductors. In this respect, the oeuvre he left behind was not extensive and incomplete, and his fame as a composer was too low for his works to be widely distributed. Marshall Stearns praised Johnson's concerts as similarly complex and, in terms of their rhythmic sensitivity, more difficult to play than the Mozart's and points out that basically only Stride pianists are able to reproduce the rhythmic subtleties adequately. This may also be a reason for the limited circulation of the works.

collection

• The Complete Edmond Hall , James P. Johnson, Sidney De Paris & Vic Dickenson Blue Note Sessions (Mosaic - 1985?) 6 LPs with Ben Webster , Sidney De Paris, Jimmy Shirley , John Simmons , Sid Catlett , Edmond Hall, Vic Dickenson, Jimmy Shirley, Al Lucas , Arthur Trappier - more details on this collection can be found at Edmond Hall, Sidney De Paris and Vic Dickenson

literature

• Tom Davin: Conversations with James P. Johnson. In: Jazz Panorama. published by Martin Williams, The Jazz Book Club, London 1965.
• Scott E. Brown: James P. Johnson. A case of mistaken identity , Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, London 1986, ISBN 0-8108-1887-6 .
• David A. Jasen, Gene Jones: Black Bottom Stomp. Eight Masters of Ragtime and Early Jazz , Routledge, New York 2002, ISBN 0-415-93641-1 .
• John Howland: Ellington Uptown. Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson and the Birth of Concert Jazz , The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2009, ISBN 978-0-472-03316-4 .
• Scott E. Brown: Liner Notes to James P. Johnson. The Symphonic Music. Nimbus Records NI 2745 2011.
• Ari Kast: Stride Piano Tricks o. O. 2010, ISBN 978-1-4499-9658-1 .
• Laurie Wright: Fats in Fact , Storyville Publications, Chigwell 1992, ISBN 0-902391-14-3 .
• Marshall Stearns: The Story of Jazz , Mentor, New York 1963.
• Lyons, Perlo: Jazz Portraits , Quill, New York 1989, ISBN 0-688-10002-3 .
• John L. Fell; Terkild Vinding: Stride. Fats, Jimmy Lion, Lambd, and all the other ticklers , Scarecrow Press, Lanham 1999, ISBN 0-8108-3563-0 .
• Rudi Blesh; Harriet Janis: They All Played Ragtime , Oak Publications, New York 1971.
• Duke Ellington: Music is My Mistress , Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York 1973.
• Don Michael Randel: The Harvard biographical dictionary of music . Harvard University Press 1996, ISBN 0-674-37299-9 , pp. 423-424 ( excerpt (Google) )
• Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler, Christian Pfarr: Reclam's Jazz Guide . 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-010355-X .

Web links

• James Price Johnson at the Red Hot Jazz Archive
• James Price Johnson in BlueBlackJazz
• town.hall.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gravestone ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Carlo Bohländer u. a. Reclam's Jazz Guide , 1989.  
2. ↑ Jasen / Jones, p. 69.
3. ↑ Davin, p. 46.
4. ↑ Brown 1986, p. 53.
5. ↑ Brown 1986, p. 70.
6. ↑ Brown 1986, p. 84.
7. ↑ Brown 1986, pp. 105f.
8. ↑ Jasen / Jones, p. 76.
9. ↑ Johnson's “Charleston” is the best-known melody for the ballroom dance of the same name in the 1920s. The 1920s were named, among other things, the Charleston era , probably not because of the music, but rather because of the eccentric dance steps and the Charleston fashion with short dresses made of extremely thin material.
10. ↑ Jasen / Jones, p. 79.
11. ↑ Brown 1986, pp. 218f.
12. ^ Document Records, DOCD-5656, Title No. 7
13. ↑ Library Of Congress, Sound Archives - Interview and sound recordings James P. Johnson with Alan Lomax December 24, 1938
14. ↑ Brown 1986, pp. 233ff.
15. ↑ Lyons / Perlo, p. 308.
16. ↑ Jasen / Jones, p. 81.
17. ↑ This becomes particularly clear in the structure of numerous recorded Stride titles, which often follow the common ragtime scheme Introduction, A, A ', B, B', A '', Bridge, C, where C depends on the tempo of the piece repeated and varied different times.
18. ↑ Kast, p. 130.
19. ↑ Brown 1986, pp. 121f.
20. ↑ Kast, pp. 130f.
21. ↑ Brown 2011, p. 4.
22. ↑ Howland, p. 203.
23. ↑ Howland, p. 211.
24. ^ Howland, p. 205.
25. ↑ Brown 2011, p. 4.
26. ↑ website of Leslie Stifelman (concert pianist), category: Discography, "Victory Stride" Musical Heritage Society / Amerco LLC., 1994
27. ↑ Brown 1986, p. 451.
28. ↑ Jasen / Jones, p. 81.
29. ↑ Ellington on Johnson's 'Carolina Shout'
30. ^ Ellington, p. 93.
31. ↑ Ellington, p. 95.
32. ^ Stearns, p. 109.