Jazz
Bunk Johnson - Trumpet
Bunk Johnson & His New Orleans Jazz Band
Bunk Johnson's Street Paraders
Bunk's Brass Band
Abbie Williams - Drums
Adolphe Alexander - Horn (Baritone)
Albert Warner - Trombone
Alcide Pavageau - Sax (Baritone)
Alphonse Steele - Drums
Alton Purnell - Piano
Austin Young - Sax (Baritone)
Baby Dodds - Drums, Drums (Snare)
Chester Zardis - Sax (Baritone)
Cliff Jackson & His Crazy Cats - Piano
Danny Barker - Guitar
Don Ewell - Piano
Don Kirkpatrick - Piano
Ed Cuffee - Trombone
Edgar Mosely - Drums
Ernest Rogers - Drums
Floyd O'Brien - Trombone
Frank Pasley - Guitar
Freddy Washington - Piano
Garvin Bushell - Clarinet
George Hulme - Annotation, Compilation, Liner Notes
George Lewis - Clarinet
Isadore Barbarin - Horn (Alto)
Jim Robinson - Trombone
Joe Clark - Sousaphone
Kid Shots Madison - Trumpet
Laurence Marrero - Banjo, Drums (Bass)
Lee Young - Drums
Manzie Johnson - Drums
Mick - Graphic Design
Pops Foster - Sax (Baritone)
Red Callender - Sax (Baritone)
Red Jones - Drums
Sandy Williams - Trombone
Sidney Bechet - Clarinet
Wade Whaley - Clarinet
Walter Decou - Piano
Wellman Braud - Sax (Baritone)
Yerba Buena Jazz Band
A valuable core sample of Bunk Johnson's remarkable career as living relic and patriarch of the traditional jazz revitalization movement of the 1940s, Bunk and the New Orleans Revival 1942-1947 contains some two and a quarter hours of austere New Orleans polyphony. This two-for-the-price-of-one package includes authentic street parade jazz, a swell taste of how Johnson sounded filling in for Lu Watters with the Yerba Buena Jazz Band, and two powerful examples of Johnson's brief collaboration with Sidney Bechet. A trio session from 1946 offers a rare opportunity to appreciate Johnson without any other horns in the room, backed only by pianist Don Ewell and drummer Alphonse Steele. This trio's treatment of "In the Gloaming" is very likely among the best recordings old Johnson ever made. Four selections from Johnson's last recording session, made (with no audience in attendance) at Carnegie Hall in 1947, round out a satisfying tribute to this controversial man and his scruffy brand of traditional jazz. While Johnson may be an easy target for critics and disgruntled historians, the music he left behind stands its own ground, unencumbered by numerical rating systems or anybody's specialized opinions. It moves at will according to its own itinerary. The best way to listen is to suspend all preconceptions, opening one's heart to the simple unity of each ensemble. Then you get the feeling there is no need for highfalutin evaluations. While the rhythms of the 1942 recordings are described in the liner notes as "rather plodding" (as compared with those 1945 sessions involving Baby Dodds), there is something weirdly satisfying about their deliberate "dance tempo" percolation. Johnson's recordings are about hanging loose and getting the feeling. See also Lester Bowie's moments of gutbucket ebullience with the Art Ensemble of Chicago. It's all about getting the feeling.
This has got to be one of the widest-ranging Bunk Johnson retrospectives ever presented to the public in one package. Johnson is first heard in New Orleans in 1942, armed with his new horn and a special set of artificial teeth designed for him by Dr. Leonard Bechet, Sidney's brother. The 1944 Yerba Buena session took Johnson to San Francisco, while a "V-Disc Veterans" date (including bassist Red Callender and Lester Young's brother Lee on drums) was recorded in Los Angeles that same year. Johnson made more recordings in New Orleans during 1944-1945, and in New York throughout 1945, 1946, and 1947. In a way it is unfortunate that certain individuals persisted in focusing the limelight (and the microphones) so exclusively upon Johnson, thereby neglecting other gifted New Orleans musicians such as Kid Shots Madison, whose woefully few recordings are hardly remembered today. (Shots appears on the Johnson's Brass Band session of May 18, 1945; three tracks from that date are included in this compilation.) In another sense listeners are awfully lucky that William Russell took the time and made the effort to record this music on location in the city of New Orleans, where surprisingly few jazz recording sessions occurred before 1942. Anyone seeking an in-depth Bunk Johnson experience should consult the American Music label of New Orleans, from which all of Johnson's hometown sessions are available on compact disc. Shots Madison shows up marvelously on George Lewis with Kid Shots Madison (AMCD-2). Congratulations to Jasmine Records of London for releasing this outstanding tribute to Bunk Johnson. He deserves to be heard.
---arwulf arwulf, All Music Guide
Bunk Johnson
Active Decades: '10s, '20s, '30s and '40s
Born: Dec 27, 1889 in New Orleans, LA
Died: Jul 07, 1949 in New Orleans, LA
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Dixieland, Classic Jazz, New Orleans Jazz, New Orleans Brass Bands
Due to the difference of opinion between his followers (who claimed he was a brilliant stylist) and his detractors (who felt that his playing was worthless), Bunk Johnson was a controversial figure in the mid-'40s, when he made a most unlikely comeback. The truth is somewhere in between.
Bunk Johnson, who tended to exaggerate, claimed that he was born in 1879 and that he played with Buddy Bolden in New Orleans, but it was discovered that he was actually a decade younger. He did have a pretty tone and, although not an influence on Louis Armstrong (as he often stated), he was a major player in New Orleans starting around 1910 when he joined the Eagle Band. Johnson was active in the South until the early '30s, but did not record during that era. Discovered in the latter part of the decade by Bill Russell and Fred Ramsey, he was profiled in the 1939 book -Jazzmen. A collection was taken up to get Johnson new teeth and a horn. In 1942, he privately recorded in New Orleans, and the next year he was in San Francisco playing with the wartime edition of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. An alcoholic, Johnson's playing tended to be erratic, and when Sidney Bechet recruited him for a band in 1945, he essentially drank himself out of the group. In 1946, Bunk Johnson led a group that included the nucleus of the ensemble George Lewis would make famous a few years later, but Johnson disliked the playing of the primitive New Orleans musicians. He was more comfortable the following year heading a unit filled with skilled swing players, and his final album (Columbia's The Last Testament of a Great Jazzman) was one of his best recordings. In 1948, the trumpeter (who was only 59 but seemed much older) returned to Louisiana and retired. Many of Bunk Johnson's better recordings have been reissued on CD by Good Time Jazz and American Music.
---Scott Yanow, All Music Guide |
