Sliding On Back to His Beginnings

When J.J. Johnson stands up to play, people listen.

His warm, furry tone and crisp improvisations are among the most identifiable sounds in all of jazz. An admired and influential jazz player for nearly five decades, he was one of the first to master the tricky rhythms and complex harmonies of bebop in the mid-’40s.

And, amazingly, he’s done it all on an instrument that seems in recent years to have been relegated to the nether reaches of jazz: the trombone.

“Some people,” says the veteran musician, trim and youthful-looking at 72, “still see us as the guys who sit in the back of the bus and make funny noises.”

But not Dizzy Gillespie, who told a young Johnson in the ‘40s, “I knew the trombone could be played

in a different way, that someone would manage it one of these days. You’re going to be the one.”

And Johnson, who makes a rare local appearance with his quintet next Sunday at the Playboy Jazz Festival, was “the one,” almost single-handedly bringing the instrument into the modern jazz era.

The arrival of rock, fusion and so-called contemporary jazz, however, diminished the trombone’s visibility. With the exception of jazz-based groups such as Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago, it was seldom heard in rock music, and the synthesizer and guitar sounds of ‘70s and ‘80s jazz found little use for the instrument.

“Even the brilliant trombonists haven’t seemed to be marketable,” Johnson says in a phone conversation from his Indianapolis home. “They haven’t become leaders the way saxophone players do. Every saxophone player’s a leader; every trumpet player’s a leader.

“There are a bunch of trombone players who could be leaders right now, but they’re not. So we’re ignored to a degree; we’re not brought to the forefront.”

It was not always so. The role of the trombone in the early New Orleans groups of the teens and ‘20s was clear and vital, pumping out powerful counterlines and propulsive tailgate rhythms. In the ‘30s and ‘40s, during the Swing Era, the trombone played a starring, big-band role as a solo instrument, elegant in such pieces as Tommy Dorsey’s theme song, “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.”

And when the Stan Kenton Orchestra emerged in the ‘40s and ‘50s, the trombone was favored by a piano-playing leader who loved the instrument’s strength and versatility, consistently showcasing it in ensemble and solo settings in the hands of, among others, Milt Bernhardt, Frank Rosolino and Eddie Bert.

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So what’s the problem here? With a history filled with such achievements, why the recent indifference? Is it a lack of interest in the instrument itself, or is it a reflection of the overall condition of jazz?

A little of both, in fact.

First, there is the failure of the trombone to generate an array of unique, individual players. Few would dispute that Johnson was effective in finding his own voice. But the younger trombonists who followed in his path, with rare exceptions, simply did not match his originality, with many simply attempting to clone his innovations into their own work. Most significantly of all, there have been no Johnson successors who have approached the accomplishment level of such post-Charlie Parker saxophonists as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane.

Second, the trombone’s recent obscurity is also a reflection of factors in the broader jazz picture.

One of the most notable has been the gradual depletion of the senior generation of jazz greats--the master artists whose very presence tends to attract young players to the same instruments. Johnson’s Playboy Festival performance will mark his first Southland appearance with his own group in years. And, although the festival’s headliners are the pop-oriented Tony Bennett and Gladys Knight, Johnson provides the event with its only unquestioned jazz hall of famer--an indication of how sparse the pickings have become at the very top of the jazz field.

The problem was exacerbated for the jazz trombone by Johnson’s absence from the jazz scene for nearly 20 years in the ‘70s and ‘80s. His departure came after a string of musical successes. The two-trombone textures of his mid-’50s collaboration with former Stan Kenton trombonist Kai Winding in the Jay and Kai Quintet had elicited instantly agreeable responses from the jazz fans of the time.

“We were blessed that our styles were different,” Johnson recalls, “but the difference was what made it work so well. Had we both been on the same wavelength, it wouldn’t have worked the way it did. Funny thing is, despite those differences, people still come up to me and say, ‘Hey, do you remember when you and J.J. worked together?!’ ”

For the next 10 or 15 years, he toured extensively, led a variety of his own groups, performed with Miles Davis and composed “Perceptions,” a large-scale orchestral piece for Dizzy Gillespie. But he was drawn to other interests.

In the mid-’60s, when jazz was under assault from rock music on the right and avant-garde sounds on the left, Johnson turned to television and film scoring.

He was away from jazz (except for an occasional recording and a tour or two) for more than 17 years. And it can hardly be a coincidence that his absence corresponds with a period in which the trombone was largely in a state of eclipse.

A 9-to-5 job as a staff composer at a New York ad company was followed by a move to L.A. in 1970. From then until the late ‘80s, the bulk of his time was spent composing and working in the studios as a recording musician. Among other things, he played third trombone (not the role one might expect for a musician of his caliber) in the orchestra for Carol Burnett’s TV variety show, and picked up whatever scoring commissions he could.

“It was tough at first,” Johnson says. “It was a whole other world that I had to adapt to. But I had a good agent who went out and beat down doors for me, and I lucked out and got a few nice assignments.”

Friendships with established film composers Earle Hagen and Lalo Schifrin helped. What Johnson was not particularly well prepared for was the stone wall he frequently encountered as an African American composer--an obstacle far different from what he experienced as a jazz player.

“Film scoring is still a white world,” he says. “That’s the way it is, that’s the way it always has been, and it’ll never be otherwise, not in my lifetime. The four or five major films I did were all about black people. Two or three of them were out and out what are called blaxploitation--pictures about drugs and pimps and black people in Harlem.

“Television was different. I really enjoyed ‘The Six Million Dollar Man,’ ‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’ and the two or three other series I worked on.”

Did any producer, in all the 17 years Johnson devoted to film and television scoring, ever suggest that--as perhaps the most famous jazz trombonist in the world--he feature himself in one of his scores?

Johnson grunts, chuckles for a moment and replies, “Oh, my goodness, you can’t be serious with that question. I didn’t hear you say that.”

But he insists that he retains no bitterness about his experiences in film and television.

“Not at all,” he says. “To be bitter is a waste of my energy, a waste of my intellect. It takes energy to be bitter, and it’ll wear you out.”

Even so, by the late ‘80s, Johnson was beginning to feel drawn back to the clarion call of jazz. Sensing a need for change and having “a strong hankering for the home scene,” he moved back to his hometown of Indianapolis. Asked about the Indiana relocation, Johnson again laughs and says, “I heard that so much when we first made the move that I wrote a song called, ‘Why Indianapolis? Why Not Indianapolis?’ We play it every night.

“And that’s really the answer,” continues Johnson. “Why not Indianapolis? My roots are here, I was born, raised and went to school here, and I have a lot of family here. It’s where I picked up the trombone when I was 14 years old, when we had a little band of young musicians with no trombonist. So when my first wife, Vivian, said, ‘Let’s go back,’ I said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ [Vivian Johnson passed away in 1992; Johnson has remarried.]

“We lived in New York for a number of years, we lived in New Jersey for a few years, and we lived in California for 18 years. So I guess you can say I’m living proof that you can go home again.”

Home to Indianapolis, and home to jazz. Johnson’s “return to public performance,” wrote critic Stanley Crouch, “was one of the signal events of the last decade.”

And an energizing event for the jazz trombone.

Johnson would be the last to take credit for it, but his return to action clearly triggered a revival. Players he speaks of favorably--Steve Turre, Robin Eubanks, Ray Anderson, Wycliffe Gordon and Delfeayo Marsalis among them--are all followers who, with Johnson as an inspiration, are focusing upon the expression of their own voices.

“I will say this,” he notes. “The whole scenario of where the jazz trombone is going these days is now looking very healthy to me.”

Johnson also is quick to stress that the aura of discovery he is beginning to detect in younger players--the quest to find one’s own “jazz persona”--was the key to his own achievements as an artist.

“I listened to a lot of trombone players when I was growing up,” he says. “Trummy Young, Jack Teagarden, Vic Dickenson, Dicky Wells--all originals in their own ways. And Fred Beckett--never a household name, even in the jazz world, but with a very personal style.

“But I’m proud to say that [saxophonist] Lester Young was the first major influence on my playing, and it was because his style was so uniquely Lester Young. After two or three notes you knew it couldn’t be anyone but Lester Young.

“So if I have anything to say to young trombonists,” Johnson says, “or to young musicians, for that matter, it’s this: Don’t worry about playing fast, worry about finding your own voice. Play with logic, with clarity, with trying to make some sense out of the music, and the listener will find you.”

Even if you play the jazz trombone.