1955 - June 6

Jay Jay Johnson Quintet – June 6 1955 

 

Leonard Feather: The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson: BLP 5070 

IT WAS not until the summer of 1955 that Jay Jay Johnson, name band musician and soloist respected and imitated during the past decade by innumerable performers all over the world, finally won a Down Beat poll. In informed quarters there were audible murmurs of "About time too"; in other sympathetic hip circles the reaction was "Better late than never." 

Blue Note record fans were way ahead of the critics who awarded Jay Jay this belated crown. The amazing young trombonist has been an important part of the Blue Note catalog ever since his first appearance years ago with Howard McGhee's All Stars on BLP 5012. He was heard as sideman with Miles Davis on 5013 and 5022 and with Kenny Dorham on 5065 in addition to appearing as a leader in the three outstanding LPs listed and described below. 

Photo by Francis Wolff

The place of Jay Jay Johnson in jazz history parallels that of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker on their respective instruments. He was the first, and by all odds the foremost, of those who showed in the mid-1940s that it was possible to translate the rhythmic, melodic and harmonic innovations of bop into terms of that cumbersome and not too easily manipulated instrument, the slide trombone. 

Jay Jay earned his nickname from his first and last initials: he was born James Louis Johnson. A native of Indianapolis, Indiana, he showed his first musical talent as a pianist in 1935, when he was eleven years old, and took up trombone three years later. After working with Clarence Love and Snookum Russell in 1941-2, he acquired his first taste of widespread recognition as a member of the Benny Carter band, with which he toured from late '42 until '45 (Max Roach was a member of the orchestra during this period). When Count Basie decided a new sound was needed in his trombone section, Jay Jay was the one who instilled it, for several months in 1945-6. Then came a long period of free-lancing with various combos in the hectic whirl of the jumping Fifty-second Street of those days. Jay Jay free-lanced with Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman and a nock of bop units. For more than a year he was on the road with Illinois Jacquet's band. 

By this time Jay Jay was the acknowledged king of his style in modern jazz circles. A board of critics and musicians assembled by Esquire had elected him the new trombone star of the year in 1946. Before long his fame had reached international proportions. With the advent of war in the Far East, Jay Jay teamed up with Oscar Pettiford in a USO unit that entertained the troops in Korea and Japan. On returning home, though, Jay Jay found that the bottom seemed to be falling out of the music business. The pickings were so lean during the next few months that in August, 1952 he took a job as a blueprint inspector at a Sperry factory in Long Island, limiting his musical activities to an occasional one-night gig or record session. Then things began looking up again, and in June 1954 Jay was able to give up his daytime chores to return to the occupation for which his talent and years of patient practice had originally designed him. He has worked pretty steadily since then, often in partnership with Kai Winding. During all the ups and downs he has never lost the esteem in which jazzmen and fans always held him. 

Jay Jay's sessions for Blue Note form a striking illustration of the variety of ideas, styles and moods with which he has succeeded in surrounding himself through the years. Each record shows a new setting, a different approach and an equally attractive presentation of the unique Johnson facility. 

Still another type of group is represented by this session. Here the blend is that of two horns that belong together as naturally as the two hands of a pianist: trombone and tenor sax. Hank Mobley, Jay Jay's choice on tenor, is a Gillespie alumnus whose work with Horace Silver on BLP 5058 attracted favorable attention. Horace also, of course, is too familiar to Blue Note customers to need any introduction here, while Kenny Clarke remains on drums as the one constant element of the three otherwise variegated Johnson sessions. Paul Chambers, a youthful and highly schooled musician, has come to prominence during the past year as a member of the Johnson-Winding quintet. 

"Daylie" Double, composed by Jay Jay, is dedicated to the popular Chicago disc jockey Daddio Daylie. A simple melodic theme on which the tenor is used mostly in thirds, it offers a point of departure for all the soloists, including a last chorus in which Jay Jay and Hank trade four-bar phrases with Clarke, then return to the ensemble theme and land on a major seventh ending. 

You're Mine You, a tune that has been too rarely recorded, was produced by the same team (Edward Heyman and Johnny Green) that wrote Body and Soul. Jay Jay takes the melody solo, in a style that is at once languorous and sentimental yet vigorous and virile. 

Pennies From Heaven, a standard among jazzmen ever since Basie recorded it some 19 years ago, opens unexpectedly with Chambers playing the melody of the last half-chorus. Then the two horns enter to play a variant theme in both unison and harmony. 

Jay Jay takes the second chorus, muted, while Horace lays out in the rhythmic accompaniment. Mobley's solo shows his unusually fine sense of time and control. 

Groovin' is a medium-slow original with a truly groovy feel to which the two-beat bass work and funky piano background contribute conspicuously. For our money, Horace almost steals the show on this one with his authentically blues-like yet unmistakably modern 16-bar contribution. After a return to the theme, there is an old-timey "blue seventh" ending. 

The next title, Viscosity, means a sticky, gluey-like thickness, and frankly, we cant see anything viscous about the bright rising inflections of the 40-bar chorus. On the contrary, Jay Jay has seldom sounded more fluent and supple. He and Hank and Horace all take their solo turns, proceeding in what might presumably be called a viscous circle. 

On Portrait of Jennie, a 1948 composition rarely performed by jazz musicians, Jay Jay plays the melody muted, at on easy medium tempo, stepping out for 16 bars while Horace takes over. 

This session is the most recent of Jay Jay's impeccable contributions to the Blue Note catalog. Like its predecessors it offers substantial proof that his is one of the truly individual and exciting voices in modern jazz. 

—LEONARD FEATHER 
Cover Photos by Francis Wolff 

Saturday Review 11 February 1956 Volume 39 Issue 6 

Johnson, long the master of modern trombonists, is in good heart here (the materials are perfunctory, however), as are Horace Silver, K. Clarke, and P. Chambers. To these ears, though, Hank Mobely, the tenor saxophonist, is as cold as winter. 

Down Beat 25 January 1956 Volume 23 Issue 2 

In the third of his sets as a leader for Blue Note, J. J.'s combo includes Hank Mobley, Horace Silver, Paul  
Chambers, and Kenny Clarke. The rhythm section is excellent, and Horace contributes several warmly angular solos. Mobley plays well but is not on par with J. J. in terms of conception.  

J. J. is superb, demonstrating again his pre-eminence among modern jazz trombonists. The three casual originals J. J.'s. He can write much better than these would indicate. Groovin', however, is earthily easeful. Heaven is another superior track, and J. J. is characteristically imaginative in the ballads. (Blue Note 5070) 

Session Information 

Jay Jay Johnson, trombone; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Horace Silver, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Kenny Clarke, drums. 

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, June 6, 1955 

tk.2, Pennies From Heaven (alt) 

tk.3, Pennies From Heaven, Blue Note 45-1632, BLP 5070, BLP 1506 

tk.6, Viscosity, Blue Note BLP 5070, BLP 1506 

tk.7, Viscosity (alt) 

tk.9, You're Mine You, Blue Note BLP 5070, BLP 1506 

tk.11, Daylie Double, Blue Note BLP 5070, BLP 1506 

tk.15, Groovin', Blue Note 45-1632, BLP 5070, BLP 1506 

tk.16, Portrait Of Jennie, Blue Note BLP 5070, BLP 1506 

tk.18, Daylie Double (alt)