Johnny Smith

This article is about the American guitarist Johnny Smith. For the US organist, see Johnny Hammond Smith .

Johnny Smith (born June 25, 1922 in Birmingham , Alabama , † June 11, 2013 in Colorado Springs ; actually John Henry Smith, Jr. ) was an American guitarist of cool jazz and mainstream jazz . He accompanied Stan Getz in his roost sessions around 1952.

Live and act

Johnny Smith was the son of an ironworker and amateur banjo player. During the American Depression of the 1920s, his family moved to New Orleans and Chattanooga, Tennessee after his father's factory in Birmingham closed, and he eventually grew up in Portland, Maine. Smith was a self-taught guitarist and began his career in 1939 in a hillbilly group called Uncle Lem and the Mountain Boys , a local band. With her he toured Maine and performed at dance festivals and weddings. After discovering his interest in jazz (especially via radio) (his role models were Charlie Christian , Django Reinhardt and Les Paul ), Smith left the Mountain Boys at the age of eighteen and formed a trio, The Airport Boys , with whom he jazzed played. From 1942 to 1946 he played the trumpet in an Air Force band, which he taught himself to play as well as his own guitar, and in an Air Force Jazz Combo (consisting of two guitars, mandolin and bass), which was also an invitation from Glenn Miller procured after hearing the band. After the war he worked as a studio musician for NBC's local station in Portland, playing in nightclubs and trumpet in a vaudeville theater. From 1947 to 1953 Smith worked as a studio musician (guitar and trumpet) and arranger for NBC's main New York station in a wide variety of musical genres.

What will be remembered most is his accompaniment by Stan Getz in 1952 on the Roost Jazz label , for which he made several records as a leader until 1960. His most famous album during this time was Moonlight in Vermont , which Smith recorded with the two saxophonists Stan Getz and Zoot Sims . This quintet with Getz helped him to international fame. He toured with the big bands of Stan Kenton and Count Basie .

His most famous composition was the title Walk, Don't Run , which he recorded in 1955 and which is based on the chords of Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise . The piece was later interpreted by Chet Atkins , among others , and adopted in simplified form by the pop band The Ventures , and made into a hit in 1960 that conquered the charts.

Johnny Smith, who also worked with Jeri Southern , left the jazz scene in the 1960s and moved to Colorado as early as 1958 to work as a teacher and run a music store. One of the main reasons was that after the death of his second wife in 1958 he had to look after his daughter alone; in addition, two of his brothers and his mother lived in Colorado Springs . After initially maintaining contact with the jazz scene in New York and occasionally performing at Birdland, for example, he only performed locally from the early 1960s. He played guitars by John D'Angelico (1905–1964) and worked as a guitar developer for companies such as Guild , Gibson and Heritage and occasionally appeared at Gibson jazz parties in Colorado.

In 1998 he received the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal from the Smithsonian Institution . In 1954 and 1955 he won the Metronome Polls in Guitar and in the same years the reader polls of Down Beat .

Johnny Smith died at the age of 90 on June 11, 2013 at his home in Colorado Springs. He was married three times, since 1960 to his third wife Sandy, with whom he had two sons. He also had a daughter from his second marriage.

His style

In contrast to the "dropped tone system" (the second tone of a piano chord is moved from the top to the bottom and thus makes playing the guitar easier), Johnny Smith was able to play "undropped" thanks to his large hands and " with his tightly harmonizing melody presentation in a retarding rhythm before Tal Farlow, the 'block chording' on the guitar prevailed. Along with Billy Bauer and Jimmy Raney, the most important cool jazz guitarist created ", says Joachim Ernst Berendt ," a whole world of rich, frugal late romantic sounds [...] "The recording of Moonlight in Vermont with Smith's guitar solo and its version made with Stan Getz of the jazz standard Tenderly are now considered to be a classic of jazz and the epitome of the cool aesthetic.

Choice discography

• Johnny Smith Quintet: Zoot Sims - The Complete 1944–1954 Small Group Sessions (Master Takes, Vol. 3) (Blue Moon)
• Johnny Smith: Moonlight in Vermont (Fresh Sound, 1952–53) with Stan Getz , Sanford Gold
• Stan Getz: The Complete Roost Recordings (Roost, 1950–1954)
• Johnny Smith, Stan Getz: Stan Getz - The Complete 1948–1952 Quintet Sessions (Blue Moon)
• Ruth Price, Johnny Smith: Ruth Price Sings with the Johnny Smith Quartet (Fresh Sound Records, ca.1955)
• Jeri Southern: Jeri Southern Meets Johnny Smith (Fresh Sound Records, ca.1955)
• Johnny Smith: The Johnny Smith Foursome (Roost / Fresh Sound Records, 1956)
• Johnny Smith: Johnny Smith and His New Quartet (Roost / Fresh Sound Records, 1956)
• Johnny Smith: The Johnny Smith Foursome, Vol. 2 (Roost / Fresh Sound Records, 1957)
• Johnny Smith: The Sound of Johnny Smith's Guitar (Roost / Fresh Sound Records, 1961) with Hank Jones

Lexical entries

• Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-532000-X .
• Martin Kunzler : Jazz Lexicon. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993

Web links

• Adam Bernstein: Johnny Smith, 90, acclaimed jazz guitarist, dies at 90. Obituary in The Washington Post, June 15, 2013

• Bill Frisell Remembers Johnny Smith in JazzTimes (2020)

Notes / individual evidence

1. ^ Guitar Legend Johnny Smith - Alive and Well in Colorado Springs by Bob Campbell, Colorado Springs Independent, March 15, 2001
2. ↑ They were re-released on Mosaic Records on an 8-CD set. Mosaic Records - The Complete Roost Johnny Smith Small Group Sessions
3. Jump up ↑ The album was one of the top two down beat charts in 1952
4. ^ Tony Bacon, Paul Day: The Ultimate Guitar Book. Edited by Nigel Osborne, Dorling Kindersley, London / New York / Stuttgart 1991; Reprint 1993, ISBN 0-86318-640-8 , p. 32.
5. ↑ Alexander Schmitz: The guitar in jazz. Supplementary considerations on JE Berendt's article. In: Guitar & Laute 5, 1983, Issue 1, pp. 82-84; here: p. 83.
6. ↑ ^{a b} quoted from Kunzler, p. 1088