James P. Johnson

James P. Johnson [also known as Jimmy Johnson] (February 1, 1894–November 17, 1955) was an American pianist and composer. With Luckey Roberts, Johnson was arguably the most important pioneer of the stride style of jazz piano playing.

Biography

James Price Johnson was born on February, 1, 1894, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Blessed with perfect pitch, and apparently near total recall, he was easily able to pick out and recreate tunes that he had heard on the piano. The proximity to New York meant that the full cosmopolitan spectrum of the city's musical experience, from bars, to cabarets, to the symphony, were at the young Johnson's disposal. In 1908 his family moved to the San Juan Hill (near where Lincoln Center stands today) section of New York City. Johnson and his contemporary, Jelly Morton, represented different branches in the subsequent evolution of the ragtime of Scott Joplin, into the jazz piano of the teens and 1920's. History would prove that the Johnson school would eventually become the more influential poo as subsequent generations of jazz pianists, whether they be in the stride, swing, or bebop tradition, can trace their lineage back to James P. Johnson.

Scott Joplin, the great ragtime pianist and composer, who had penned the first great hit of the genre ("Maple Leaf Rag"), had moved to New York in 1908. It was here that he died, broken, and nearly penniless, in 1917, frustrated by his unsuccessful attempts to have his last great compositional effort, the opera Treemonisha, performed. It was Johnson, who grew up listening the music of Scott Joplin, who was to become the man most responsible for the evolution of the ragtime piano of Joplin, into the earliest, and still most swinging form of piano jazz, which has become known today as Harlem Stride Piano. Joplin, in death, remained a significant influence on Johnson, who retained links to the ragtime era, by playing Joplin's rags, most notably "Maple Leaf", as well as the more modern (according to Johnson) and demanding, "Euphonic Sounds". Johnson had also been aware of Joplin's operatic poo, as in his collection was found a copy of "A Real Slow Drag" from Treemonisha. This is of no small significance, as, in the 1930s, when, financially secure through the royalties from his compositions, Johnson was able to pursue a lifelong ambition of writing orchestral works. In this endeavor, he was inspired by, and followed in the footsteps of other pioneers from the world of popular music and jazz, such as Gershwin, and William Grant Still, both of whom he knew, and could count as colleagues.^{[citation needed]}

In the teens, Johnson gained a reputation as one of the premier ragtime pianists on the East coast, on par with the likes of Eubie Blake and Luckey Roberts. As such, he was to become in demand as a recording artist, and made dozens of superb player piano roll recordings for Aeolian, Perfection (the label of the Standard Music Roll Co., Orange, NJ), Artempo (label of Bennett & White, Inc., Newark, NJ), Rythmodik, and QRS during the period from 1917 - 1927. As his piano style continued to evolve, his 1921 phonograph recordings of "Harlem Strut", "Carolina Shout", and "Keep off the Grass" were among the first jazz piano solos to be put onto records. It was during this period that he met George Gershwin, who was also a young piano-roll artist at Aeolian. Both men would later expand their musical focus to extended orchestral compositions. Gershwin would continue to encounter Johnson and other black artists at upscale parties for the Park Avenue set. Johnson's piano style later was to become a model for the early Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and Thelonious Monk.

James Weldon Johnson, a pioneer of the African-American musical theater and renowned choral director, in his book, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, describes a Harlem venue typical of the type in which Johnson could be found holding forth in the teens and the twenties ( not coincidentally, the pianist described in the selection bears more than a passing resemblance to Johnson, and further, his style is highly suggestive of Johnson's own. ): "...there was a young fellow singing a song, accompanied on the piano by a short, thickset, dark man.... After the singer had responded to a rousing encore, the stout man at the piano began to run his fingers up and down the keyboard. This he did in a manner which indicated that he was a master of a good deal of technique. Then he began to play; and such playing! I stopped talking to listen. It was music that demanded a physical response.... It was music of a kind I had never heard before.... The barbaric harmonies, the audacious resolutions, often consisting of an abrupt jump from one key to another, the intricate rhythms in which the accents fell in the most unexpected places, but in which the beat was never lost, produced a most curious effect - the dexterity of his left hand in making rapid octave runs and jumps was little short of marvelous; and with his right he frequently swept half the keyboard with clean cut chromatics which he fitted in so nicely as never to fail to arouse in his listeners a sort of pleasant surprise at the accomplishment of the feat." ^[1]

Johnson would hone his craft, playing night after night in such settings. By his own description, catering to the egos and idiosyncracies of the many singers he so encountered necessitated being able to play in any key. He would develop into a sensitive and facile accompanist; Johnson was in fact the favorite accompanist of Ethel Waters ( who advised a young Fletcher Henderson, with whom she recorded frequently, to study the recordings of Johnosn in order to get a better feeling for the blues ) and Bessie Smith, and was reportedly also the latter's favorite pianist. Ethel Waters wrote in her autobiography that working with musicians such as Johnson " ...made you want to sing until your tonsils fell out." This was indeed mutual admiration, as the surviving 4 sides, done at their only joint recording session, demonstrate. They are duets, performed by 2 artists who represented the pinnacles of their respective crafts. Johnson personally taught a young Fats Waller and got him his first piano roll and recording assignments. Along with Fats Waller and Willie 'The Lion' Smith, 'The Big Three' embodied the apex of the development of the Harlem Stride piano style. "Carolina Shout" was their "Maple Leaf Rag" - the test piece that put every pianist on notice. Duke Ellington, as did many others, learned it note for note from the 1921 QRS Johnson piano roll. This thread represented the evolution of East Coast ragtime, infused with elements of the blues, into the distinctive stride sound that still exists today (Mention should be made at this point of the great James Hubert Blake aka Eubie Blake, composer of enduring American standards such as "I'm Just Wild About Harry", and "Memories of You". Eubie played a somewhat less rhythmically developed style of East Coast ragtime than either Luckey Roberts or Johnson, yet at the same time, one that was more dissonant, and hotter than that of the Midwestern ragtime pioneers. In this sense, Blake can be considered to be a transitional figure between the classic ragtime of Joplin, Scott and Lamb, and the fully developed, hard swinging, more harmonically advanced style of the stride pianists).

Besides being a jazz piano pioneer, and a most spontaneously inventive performer, Johnson composed many hit tunes in his work for the musical theatre: "Charleston" (which debuted in his Broadway show Runnin' Wild in 1923,^[2] although by some accounts Johnson had written it years earlier) became one of the most popular songs and arguably the definitive dance number/theme tune of the Roaring Twenties. Others are "If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)", "You've Got to Be Modernistic", "Don't Cry, Baby", "Keep off the Grass", "Old Fashioned Love", "A Porter's Love Song to a Chambermaid", "Carolina Shout", and "Snowy Morning Blues". He wrote music in many styles, including waltzes, ballet, symphonic pieces, and light opera; many other of these ambitious, long-form pieces have been presumed lost, though in fact many of these extended works exist in manuscript form of various stages of completeness in the collection of Johnson's papers housed at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. Johnson's success as a popular composer qualified him as a member of ASCAP in 1926.

1928 saw the premier of Johnson's rhapsody, Yamekraw, named after a black community in Savannah Georgia. William Grant Still served as the orchestrator, and Fats Waller held down the piano chair, as Johnson could not get out of the contractual obligation to conduct the orchestra for his then running hit Broadway Show, Keep Shufflin' (written jointly with Fats). Harlem Symphony, composed during the 1930's, when Johnson, now reasonably financially secure from compositional royalties and in semi-retirement, was performed featuring Johnson at the piano, at Carnegie Hall in 1945, with Joseph Cherniavsky, previously a mainstay of the Yiddish Theatre, as the conductor. Long thought to have been lost, the orchestration of Harlem Symphony was rediscovered in the 1980's by the conductor Marin Alsop. She featured this, along with other of Johnson's classical works, such as Yamekraw, Jasmine Concerto, and Rhythm Drums at a Lincoln Center concert devoted to Johnson in 1990. These were recorded on the CD, Victory Stride(named for another Johnson composition, also on the album, and previously recorded by Johnson for Blue Note in 1944), featuring maestra Alsop's Concordia Orchestra. This is described in the article by Leslie Stifleman, Concordia's pianist. A description of the recent rediscovery and reconstruction of De Organizer, a one act opera done in collaboration with the poet Langston Hughes, is included in the discographical section below.

The societal norms of the time would dictate that the majority of Johnson's professional and social interactions would remained confined within the "talented tenth" of the black community, i.e. those with achievements, as well as intellectual abilities on par with his. The majority of his phonograph recordings of the 1920's and early 1930's were done for labels such as Black Swan (founded by Johnson friend W.C. Handy, and where William Grant Still served in an A & R [Artist and Repertoire] capacity), and Columbia. These, as well as most major labels, promoted a so-called Race Series of recordings, which featured music of the "negro race." This form of de facto segregation was a major reason for Johnson's relative obscurity in the larger society during this period. Materials in the Johnson archives include the letterhead of an organization called "Friends of James P. Johnson", ostensibly founded at the time (presumably in the late 1930s) in order to promote Johnson's then idling career. Names on the letter head form a virtual Who's Who of the contemporary African American intelligentsia, and include, among others, Paul Robeson, Thomas 'Fats' Waller, Walter White (President of the NAACP), the actress Mercedes Gilbert, and Bessye Bearden, the mother of artist Romare Bearden. Consequently, it is by no accident, that two Bearden paintings bear the name of Johnson compositions: Carolina Shout, and Snow(y) Morning. This network of friends and colleagues, in combination with the body of his contemporary work, places Johnson squarely within the artistic and intellectual mainstream of the Harlem Renaissance, a heretofore largely unrecognized aspect of his significance to American culture.

In the late 1930s,as the Great Depression began to recede, Johnson slowly started to re-emerge on a larger public stage, both as a recording artist and a live performer. With the rise of independent, specialty jazz labels, Johnson began to record with his own and other groups first for the HRS label. He appeared at the Cafe Society Downtown, founded by the socially minded impresario, Barney Josephson, who into the 1980s, was still running his latest incarnation of a traditional jazz venue, called the Cookery, where one could hear, among others, Dick Hyman, as well as the last surviving stride pianist from the 1930s, Joe Turner. This gig would have coincided with Johnson's appearances at the Spirituals to Swing Concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1938, and 1939, organized by his friend, John Hammond, for whom he recorded a substantial series of solos and band sides in 1939. The associations with white liberals such as Hammond, Josephson and Moses Asch, point to a less appreciated/documented side of Johnson; that of a black man living in a still largely segregated, racially divided society, with a resulting social consciousness which was to emerge at that time, as demonstrated by his collaboration with Langston Hughes, in the one act opera, De Organizer.

Seemingly at the height of his technical powers, Johnson suffered what was described as a stroke in 1940. In modern medical terminology, this was most likely more of a transient ischemic attack (aka TIA), or a milder, reversible form of stroke, as, when he returned to the public eye in the early 1940s, even though his style was clearly different, i.e. less clean and precise, his technique was still formidable, and he began to resume a very heavy schedule of performing, composing, and recording. He demonstrated his adaptability by leading several small live as well as studio groups, and by performing regularly, now often with racially integrated bands led by musicians such as the guitarist Eddie Condon, trumpeters Yank Lawson and Sidney De Paris, clarinetists Sidney Bechet, Rod Cless, and Edmond Hall, for the most respected and important jazz labels of the day, including Asch, Black and White, Blue Note, Commodore, Circle, and Decca. By then, a much respected and beloved elder statesman of jazz, he was a regular guest star and featured soloist on Rudi Blesh's This is Jazz broadcasts, as well as at Eddie Condon's Town Hall concerts. Always seeking to extend the range of his compositional interests, he also did some independent study with the noted teacher of composition, Maury Deutsch, who could also count Django Reinhardt and Charlie Parker among his pupils.

As noted previously, Johnson was one of the earliest innovators of what has subsequently become known as the Harlem Stride school of jazz piano. A direct descendant of the ragtime of Scott Joplin, borrowing from it many melodic as well as harmonic devices pioneered by Joplin, the stride idiom is distinguished from ragtime by several essential characteristics:

Rhythmic: Ragtime proved to be a revolutionary new form of composed music within the western harmonic tradition, by the introduction of syncopation into the performance; that is the emphasis of traditionally less emphasized beats within the 4 beat measure i.e. whereas in European piano music it is the 1st and 3rd beats which normally get the emphasis, in ragtime, this emphasis is usually shifted to the 2nd and 4th beats of the measure. When one is raised on the former,and expecting the 1/3 emphasis, the correct performance of a piano rag produces a somewhat pleasantly surprising, disorienting, and sometimes mildly intoxicating effect. This is perhaps what many traditionalists found to be subversive: not only was this rhythm iconoclastic, but, as the music was associated with, and often composed by people of color, there was the subliminal connection to a dangerous, repressed sexuality which threatened the morals of the contemporary Victorian society.

The Stride pianists introduced a far more free-swinging rhythm into their performances than is possible to duplicate, than for instance, by merely correctly interpreting the well-worked-out and annotated ragtime compositions of Joplin and his colleagues; there is more to achieving the swinging stride effect than by merely playing notes on a printed page. A certain amount of the rhythmic subtlety that is required to play stride successfully is transcended by what can be written on the printed page. In a stride performance there must be a certain degree of anticipation of the left hand by the right hand, a form of pulling and tugging, or tension and release, where the patterns played by the right hand are interpolated within the beat generated by the left. Crudely stated and oversimplified, this is what can be said to give a correctly executed stride performance its lilt, swing, and powerful drive. It is doubtful that any amount of written description, no matter how accurate, can give a truly accurate portrayal of what it means to stride or swing. The interested reader is referred to the solo recordings of Waller, or Johnson, for a truly convincing demonstration of the swinging power of stride.

Harmonic (Incorporation of elements of the Blues): A further distinguishing characteristic between ragtime, and stride, is the more frequent incorporation by the latter, of elements of the blues, as well as other more advanced harmonies than usually found in the works of even more harmonically sophisticated classic ragtime composers such as Artie Matthews, James Scott or Joseph Lamb.

Improvisation: Lastly, classic ragtime was for the most part, a composed music, based upon the European classics, as well as marches of the day. The latter, also served as the rhythmic model for the syncopation that would come to distinguish ragtime from its European influences. Individual performers can impart their own widely varying rhythmic, as well as dynamic interpretations into a performance of, for instance, a Joplin piece, even the interpolation of grace notes, or fill-ins into the standard alternating single note/cord pattern of the ragtime bass, but true improvisation in classic ragtime did occur only rarely. The final element of the true genius of pianists such as Waller and Johnson, was the introduction of often well worked out rhythmic, harmonic and melodic figures into their performances, and occasionally, even spontaneous improvisation, all still performed according to well worked out guidelines, which would preserve both the rhythmic structure, as well as the essential melody of the tune being played. Further, the rhythm and harmonies played in the right hand would have to fit logically with the beat generated by the left hand, in order to maintain the necessary degree of tension and release, and to therefore maintain the swing so generated. Improvisation in this context was not a free for all, or random or chaotic event,rather, it would proceed in a logical sequence from its starting to its ending point. It needed to have this well worked out internal logic of its own, which meshed within the larger work, especially when the stride pianists were playing behind singers, or within small bands.

In their public performances, the stride pianists would use as vehicles, the well worked out variations/arrangements of either, popular songs of the day ( for example "Liza" or "Tea for Two"), or, especially composed test pieces within the idiom, offered by its main performers. Examples of these test pieces included Johnson's "Carolina Shout", "Keep off the Grass", and "Harlem Strut", Fats Waller's "Handful of Keys", and Willie "the Lion" Smith's "Fingerbuster". Other pianists would attempt to learn these pieces, and then offer their own interpretations, as the basis for friendly competition amongst themselves, often performed during after hour sessions, that could be heard at any of the dozen or so nightclubs that thrived in Harlem, at the time. Johnson remained the acknowledged king of the New York jazz pianists, as his playing was consistently the most swinging, as well as inventive, until he was dethroned c. 1933 by the recently arrived Art Tatum. In this there was indeed no disgrace, as Tatum, is now by almost universal acclaim, considered to be the greatest keyboard technician that jazz piano has ever known.^{[citation needed]}

Johnson permanently retired from performing after suffering a severe, paralyzing stroke in 1951. He died in Jamaica, New York. He is buried im Mt Olivet Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens. Unmarked since his death in 1955, his resting place will be re-consecrated with a headstone paid for with funds raised by an event put together by the James P. Johnson Foundation, the musician and promoter Spike Wilner, and Johnson biographer, Dr. Scott Brown. This all day program was held on October 4, 2009, called James P. Johnson's Last Rent Party, took place at Wilner's Greenwich Village venue, Small's Jazz Club <ref6> (Quite appropriately Johnson led a band at Small's Paradise in Harlem in the early 1930s).

Perfunctory obituaries appeared in even the New York Times. The pithiest and most angry remembrance of Johnson was written by his friend, the producer and impresario John Hammond, and appeared in Down Beat under the title Talents of James P. Johnson Went Unappreciated. It is reproduced in its entirety on the website of the James P. Johnson Foundation.

In spite of the fact that Johnson can arguably be considered to have been the first jazz pianist, the composer of the signature tune of the Roaring Twenties, as well as other enduring tunes, he remains largely unknown to the general public.

The noted Reed College musicologist David Schiff, has referred to Johnson as the musical incarnation of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man^[3] . Indeed, his musical legacy is present within the body of work of his prized pupil, the more famous Fats Waller as well as scores of other pianists who were influenced by him, such as: Donald Lambert, Pat Flowers, Joe Turner, Cliff Jackson, Hank Duncan, Claude Hopkins, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Don Ewell, Johnny Guarnieri, Dick Hyman, Dick Wellstood, Ralph Sutton, Neville Dickie, Mike Lipskin, Jim Turner, Louis Mazetier, Bernd Lhotzky, Rossano Sportiello, Chris Hopkins, and Butch Thompson.

Honors and recognitions

On September 16, 1995 the U.S. Post Office issues a James P. Johnson 32 cent commemorative postage stamp.^[4]

Year Inducted	Title
1970	Songwriters Hall of Fame
1973	Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame
1980	Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame
2007	ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame^[5]

Film scores

Johnson's compositions as a film score were used in a number of movies, which were compiled from previously written musical compositions. Partial list includes:^[6]

Year	Film	Actor/Actress	Songs

1929	The Show of Shows	John Barrymore Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Myrna Loy	"Your Love is All I Crave"
1933	Dancing Lady	Joan Crawford Clark Gable Fred Astaire	"Alabama Swing"
1938	The Big Broadcast of 1938	W.C. Fields Dorothy Lamour Bob Hope	"Charleston"
1939	The Roaring Twenties	James Cagney Humphrey Bogart	"If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)"
1942	Casablanca	Humphrey Bogart Ingrid Bergman Dooley Wilson	"If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)"
1943	Stormy Weather	Lena Horne Cab Calloway Fats Waller Dooley Wilson	"There's No Two Ways About Love"
1946	It's a Wonderful Life	James Stewart Donna Reed Lionel Barrymore	"Charleston"
1947	The Man I Love	Ida Lupino Robert Alda	"If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)"
1949	Flamingo Road	Joan Crawford	"If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)"
1957	The Joker Is Wild	Frank Sinatra	"If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)"
1991	Rambling Rose	Laura Dern Robert Duvall	"If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)"
1991	Billy Bathgate	Dustin Hoffman Bruce Willis Nicole Kidman	"The Mule Walk"
1994	Cobb	Tommy Lee Jones Lolita Davidovich	"Bleeding Hearted Blues"
2001	The Majestic	Jim Carrey	"Blue Note Boogie"
2003	Alex & Emma	Kate Hudson Luke Wilson	"Charleston" (1923)
2006	Southland Tales	Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson	"If I Could Be with You (One Hour Tonight)" (1926)
2007	Perfect Stranger	Halle Berry Bruce Willis	"Don't Cry Baby"

Discography

1950: Jazz, Vol. 1: South Folkways Records
1953: Jazz, Vol. 7: New York (1922-1934) Folkways
1953: Jazz, Vol. 9: Piano Folkways
1960: Jazz of the Forties, Vol. 1: Jazz at Town Hall Folkways
1961: A History of Jazz: The New York Scene Folkways
1964: The Piano Roll Folkways
1966: The Asch Recordings, 1939 to 1947 - Vol. 1: Blues, Gospel, and Jazz Folkways
1973: The Original James P. Johnson Folkways
1974: Toe Tappin' Ragtime Folkway
1977: Early Ragtime Piano Folkways
1981: Striding in Dixieland Folkways
1996: The Original James P. Johnson: 1942-1945, Piano Solos Smithsonian Folkways
2001: Every Tone a Testimony Smithsonian Folkways
2008: Classic Piano Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Smithsonian Folkways

Re-issues

Multiple CDs of Johnson's recordings have been reissued. The French Chronogical(sic) Classics series includes six discs devoted to Johnson. The Decca CD, Snowy Morning Blues, contains 20 sides done for the Brunswick and Decca labels, between 1930 and 1944. This CD includes an 8 tune, Fats Waller Memorial set, and 2 solos, "Jingles", and "You've Got to be Modernistic", which arguably demonstrate the best of Johnson's hard swinging stride style. The LP, and CD, Father of the Stride Piano, collects some of Johnson's best recordings for the Columbia family of labels, done between 1921 and 1939. It includes "Carolina Shout", "Worried and Lonesome Blues", and "Hungry Blues" (from De Organizer).

Johnson's complete Blue Note recordings (solos, band sides in groups lead by himself as well as Edmond Hall and Sidney DeParis) were made available in a collection issued by Mosaic Records. The largest, and probably the best anthology of Johnson's recordings was compiled in the Giants of Jazz series by Time-Life Music. This three LP collection contains 40 sides recorded from 1921 to 1945, and is supplemented with extensive liner notes, including a biographical essay by Frank Kappler, and erudite criticism of the musical selections by the noted contemporary stride pianist Dick Wellstood, and the musicologist, Willa Rouder . Johnson was also a premier piano roll artist, recording approximately 60 rolls between 1917 and 1927. Many of these have been issued on CD, on the Biograph Label. A book of musical transcriptions of Johnson's piano roll performances of his own compositions has been prepared by Dr. Robert Pinsker, to be published through the auspices of the James P. Johnson Foundation.

References

^ James Weldon Johnson:The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man(New York, Knopf, 1927; Avon Books, 1965), p. 65. Quoted in Scott E. Brown: James P. Johnson: A Case of Mistaken Identity, p. 53.
^ Internet Broadway Database
^ 7
^ James P. Johnson Commemorative postage stamp
^ The ASCP Jazz Wall of Fame list
^ Filmography: James P. Johnson

3. Schiff, David: A Pianist with Harlem on His Mind, New York Times, 2/16/1992

External links

[1] James Weldon Johnson:The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man(New York, Knopf, 1927; Avon Books, 1965), p. 65. Quoted in Scott E. Brown: James P. Johnson: A Case of Mistaken Identity, p. 53.

[2] Internet Broadway Database

[3] 7

[4] James P. Johnson Commemorative postage stamp

[5] The ASCP Jazz Wall of Fame list

[6] Filmography: James P. Johnson

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