 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(June 2013) |
Frederic Homer Johnson (November 19, 1908 – November 8, 1967), known professionally as Keg Johnson, was an American jazz trombonist.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(June 2013) |
Frederic Homer Johnson (November 19, 1908 – November 8, 1967), known professionally as Keg Johnson, was an American jazz trombonist.
He was born in Dallas, Texas. His father was a choir director there and also worked at a local Studebaker plant where Keg also worked for a while.
He and his younger brother, Budd Johnson, began their musical careers singing and playing first with their father and later with Portia Pittman, daughter of Booker T. Washington. Keg played various instruments but is most noted for the trombone. The two brothers played in Dallas-area bands as the Blue Moon Chasers and later in Ben Smith's Music Makers. Eventually they performed with an Amarillo group led by Gene Coy called The Happy Black Aces.
In the late 1920s, the Johnson brothers played in several bands in Dallas, including Terence Holder’s Dark Clouds of Joy. [1] In 1929 they were playing with Jesse Stone, [1] with whom they travelled to Kansas City and joined George E. Lee. [1]
By 1930, Keg had settled in Chicago playing with Jabbo Smith, Cassino Simpson, and Eddie Mallory, amongst others, [1] before touring and recording with Louis Armstrong from January 1933, [1] and recording his first solo on Armstrong's Basin Street Blues .[ citation needed ]
In 1933, Keg Johnson went to New York, playing and recording with Benny Carter (1933–4), [1] Fletcher Henderson (February–November 1934) [1] and, in 1935, began his long-running collaboration with Cab Calloway [1] at the Cotton Club.
Johnson remained with Cab Calloway for some 15 years, coinciding with fellow trombonists Claude Jones and DePriest Wheeler and later Tyree Glenn and Quentin Jackson, as well as other musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, [2] before moving to Los Angeles where he briefly changed careers renovating houses.
During the 1950s, he returned to New York City where he and his brother recorded the album Let's Swing. In 1961, Keg began playing with Ray Charles and was still in his band when Keg died in Chicago on November 8, 1967.
His son, Frederic Homer "Keg" Johnson, Jr. (October 24, 1939 — May 16, 2015), was a record producer whose first production was the R&B hit, "Going In Circles", performed by The Friends of Distinction. He also produced the Sylvers, Lakeside, Shalamar, LeVert, The Brothers Johnson, Gene Harris, Bobby Womack, the Blind Boys of Alabama, among others.
David Roy Eldridge, nicknamed "Little Jazz", was an American jazz trumpeter. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the dominant style of jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.
Coleman Randolph Hawkins, nicknamed "Hawk" and sometimes "Bean", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. One of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument, as Joachim E. Berendt explained: "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn". Hawkins biographer John Chilton described the prevalent styles of tenor saxophone solos prior to Hawkins as "mooing" and "rubbery belches". Hawkins denied being first and noted his contemporaries Happy Caldwell, Stump Evans, and Prince Robinson, although he was the first to tailor his method of improvisation to the saxophone rather than imitate the techniques of the clarinet. Hawkins' virtuosic, arpeggiated approach to improvisation, with his characteristic rich, emotional, and vibrato-laden tonal style, was the main influence on a generation of tenor players that included Chu Berry, Charlie Barnet, Tex Beneke, Ben Webster, Vido Musso, Herschel Evans, Buddy Tate, and Don Byas, and through them the later tenormen, Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, Flip Phillips, Ike Quebec, Al Sears, Paul Gonsalves, and Lucky Thompson. While Hawkins became known with swing music during the big band era, he had a role in the development of bebop in the 1940s.
Kenneth Clarke Spearman, known professionally as Kenny Clarke and nicknamed Klook, was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. A major innovator of the bebop style of drumming, he pioneered the use of the ride cymbal to keep time rather than the hi-hat, along with the use of the bass drum for irregular accents.
The swing era was the period (1933–1947) when big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States, especially for teenagers. Though this was its most popular period, the music had actually been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Bennie Moten, Cab Calloway, Earl Hines, and Fletcher Henderson, and white bands from the 1920s led by the likes of Jean Goldkette, Russ Morgan and Isham Jones. An early milestone in the era was from "the King of Swing" Benny Goodman's performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, bringing the music to the rest of the country. The 1930s also became the era of other great soloists: the tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Lester Young; the alto saxophonists Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges; the drummers Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Jo Jones and Sid Catlett; the pianists Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson; the trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Bunny Berigan, and Rex Stewart.
J. (Jack) C. Higginbotham was an American jazz trombonist. His playing was robust and swinging.
Urban Clifford "Urbie" Green was an American jazz trombonist who toured with Woody Herman, Gene Krupa, Jan Savitt, and Frankie Carle. He played on over 250 recordings and released more than two dozen albums as a soloist. He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1995.
Leon Brown "Chu" Berry was an American jazz tenor saxophonist during the 1930s. He is perhaps best known for his time as a member of singer Cab Calloway's big band.
William Wells, known professionally as Dicky Wells, was an American jazz trombonist.
Albert J. "Budd" Johnson III was an American jazz saxophonist and clarinetist who worked extensively with, among others, Ben Webster, Benny Goodman, Big Joe Turner, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Count Basie, Billie Holiday and, especially, Earl Hines.
Gene Roland (1921–1982) was a talented jazz musician, composer, and arranger who contributed richly to American jazz, especially through his work with the Stan Kenton Orchestra. Born in Dallas, Texas, he played multiple instruments, including the trumpet, trombone, and saxophone, and collaborated with icons like Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. Roland was pivotal in defining the unique "Four Brothers" sound that influenced big band jazz. Throughout his career, he contributed groundbreaking arrangements and compositions for many major bands, performing globally and even working with Denmark's Radiohus Orchestra.
Sahib Shihab was an American jazz and hard bop saxophonist and flautist. He variously worked with Luther Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Fletcher Henderson, Tadd Dameron, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, John Coltrane and Quincy Jones among others.
Walter Purl "Foots" Thomas was an American saxophonist, flutist, and arranger in Cab Calloway's orchestra, one of the most famous bands of the swing era in jazz.
Hilton Jefferson was an American jazz alto saxophonist born in Danbury, Connecticut, United States, perhaps best known for leading the saxophone section from 1940 to 1949 in the Cab Calloway band. Jefferson is said to have been "a soft, delicate saxophone player, with an exquisite sensibility."
Joseph Rupert Benjamin was an American jazz bassist.
Claude Jones was an American jazz trombonist.
Taft Jordan was an American jazz trumpeter.
Nathan Peck was an American jazz trombonist.
Alton "Slim" Moore was an American jazz trombonist.
Carl Donnell "Kansas" Fields was an American jazz drummer.
A Study in Frustration: The Fletcher Henderson Story is a box set compilation surveying studio recordings of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra from 1923 to 1938, released in 1961 on Columbia Records, CXK 85470. It initially appeared as a four-album set produced by Frank Driggs and assembled by John Hammond, both of whom also wrote the liner notes. The set was part of a Thesaurus of Classic Jazz series on Columbia which included King of the Delta Blues Singers also worked on by Hammond and Driggs and released in 1961, the first album reissue of songs by blues legend Robert Johnson.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
 | This Texas biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
