J. J. Johnson

Both of them in the l-- early 1980s were members of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

And before that, you heard music from a guy who was one of the first trombonists to play bebop, Mr. J.J. Johnson.

Music from the imminent J.J. Johnson, Volume One.

The name of the song is entitled, It Could Happen to You.

What could happen to me? It features Clifford Brown on trumpet, J.J.

Johnson, trombone, Jimmy Heath, tenor sax, and we have John Lewis on piano, Percy Heath, bass, Kenny Clarke on drums.

And we heard music from the divine one, the lovely Sarah Vaughan.

She gave us her vocalese version of an Earl Garner classic, Misty.

Yeah.

They all made it sound real cool and, and smooth and hip, you know, in 1949, uh, I think Kai Winding and or JJ Johnson played the trombone book on a lot of that or on all of it, I think.

And I'm here to tell you that music is humbling just to play through those parts.

So, you know, that's kind of how it's gone for me over 35 plus years, almost 40 years, really.

red Garland, you know, just keep going.

Tommy Flanagan, uh, Barry Harris.

I mean, Cedar, I guess I mentioned him and, but you know, I, I used to tell people if, if you really want to know what I'm trying to do on the trombone, yes, JJ Johnson, Curtis Fuller, slide Hampton, of course, you know, all day long and many others, but, uh, it's really piano trios.

And if I could just get into that flow enough so that I could play with in that kind of setting and not sound like I'm sticking out like a sore thumb, you know?

And, you know, 80 bucks.

and in 90 bucks I had to do the cabaret act on the Sunday with all Neville Staples um Lucy Kinnar and and all which was also amazing education for me so I had this Saturday and Sunday Arvo thing but I could play Saturday night Friday night Thursday night I had it at the Northern Star for seven years with the with all those bands yep Mark Johnson and yeah and Nick um doing all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff, free improvisation to weird vignettes and originals, vignettes from the, from the real book, I guess, that people would never play.

Stuff that was not a standard by any means.

So we would pick and choose things that we could develop and groove in our own way.

It's gone out of my head.

Hopefully it'll come back.

But yeah, Curtis is a beautiful exponent of that post JJ Johnson bebop thing, you know, beautiful player, great

thinker, great lines.

It's like a Mahler trombone solo, that or...

JJ Johnson in the 50s and 60s, the jazz trombonist.

I'm telling you, there are YouTube people, trombone people, and there's nothing cool about trombone.

Trumpet has Miles Davis.

Two-head, everybody came in.

To join him, Zutty Singleton, J.J. Johnson, I mean, Roy Eldridge.

J.J. Johnson, one of the most amazing trombone players in history.

Incredible.

He was great.