Albert J. "Budd" Johnson III (December 14, 1910 – October 20, 1984) was an American jazz saxophonist and clarinetist who worked extensively with, among others,

Ben Webster Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27, 1909 – September 20, 1973) was an American jazz tenor Saxophone, saxophonist. He performed in the United States and Europe and made many recordings with Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Johnny Hodges, a ...

Benny Goodman Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader, known as the "King of Swing". His orchestra did well commercially. From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing bi ...

Big Joe Turner Joseph Vernon "Big Joe" Turner Jr. (May 18, 1911 – November 24, 1985) was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him". Turner's greatest fa ...

Coleman Hawkins Coleman Randolph Hawkins (November 21, 1904 – May 19, 1969), nicknamed "Hawk" and sometimes "Bean", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.Yanow, Scot"Coleman Hawkins: Artist Biography" AllMusic. Retrieved December 27, 2013. One of the first ...

Dizzy Gillespie John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( ; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improvisation, improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy El ...

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American Jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous Big band, jazz orchestra from 1924 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D ...

Quincy Jones Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024) was an American record producer, composer, arranger, conductor, trumpeter, and bandleader. Over the course of his seven-decade career, he received List of awards and nominations re ...

Count Basie William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...

Billie Holiday Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday made significant contributions to jazz music and pop ...

and, especially, Earl Hines.

Life and career

Johnson initially played drums and piano before switching to tenor saxophone. In the 1920s, he performed in Texas and parts of the Midwest, working with Jesse Stone among others. Johnson had his recording debut while working with

Louis Armstrong Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...

's band in 1932 to 1933, but he is more known for his work, over many years, with Earl Hines. It is contended that he and

Billy Eckstine William Clarence Eckstine (July 8, 1914 – March 8, 1993) was an American jazz and pop singer and a bandleader during the swing and bebop eras. He was noted for his rich, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. In 2019, Eckstine was posthumously a ...

, Hines' long-term collaborator, led Hines to hire "modernists" in the birth of

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo (usually exceeding 200 bpm), complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerou ...

, which came largely out of the Hines band. Johnson was also an early figure in the bebop era, doing sessions with

in 1944. Johnson was a key figure in the first bebop group on 52nd Street in NYC, which played at the Onyx Club (1944) and featured Johnson, Dizzy Gillespie, George Wallington (pn), Oscar Pettiford (bs) and Max Roach (drs). Johnson urged Gillespie to write out his melodic ideas for 2 horns (trumpet and saxophone) to play in unison, a sound which became the signature style of small-group bebop. In the 1950s he led his own group, and did session work for

Atlantic Records Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over the course of its first two decades, starting from the release of its first recor ...

– he is the featured tenor saxophone soloist on

Ruth Brown Ruth Alston Brown (; January 12, 1928 – November 17, 2006) was an American singer-songwriter and actress, sometimes referred to as the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Queen of R&B". She was noted for bringing a popular music, pop music ...

's hit " Teardrops from My Eyes". In the mid-1960s, he began working and recording again with Hines. His association with Hines is his longest lasting and most significant. In 1975, he began working with the New York Jazz Repertory Orchestra. He was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1993. His grandson, Albert Johnson (aka Prodigy), was a member of the hip-hop duo

Mobb Deep Mobb Deep was an American Hip-hop, hip hop duo formed in Queens, New York (state), New York in 1990. Consisting of rappers/songwriters/record producers Prodigy (rapper), Prodigy and Havoc (musician), Havoc, they are considered to be among the pr ...

. He died of a heart attack in Kansas City at the age of 73.

Discography

As leader/coleader

*1958: '' Blues a la Mode'' ( Felsted) *1960: '' Budd Johnson and the Four Brass Giants'' ( Riverside) with Ray Nance, Clark Terry, Nat Adderley and Harry Edison *1960: '' Let's Swing!'' ( Swingville) *1963: '' French Cookin''' (

Argo In Greek mythology, the ''Argo'' ( ; ) was the ship of Jason and the Argonauts. The ship was built with divine aid, and some ancient sources describe her as the first ship to sail the seas. The ''Argo'' carried the Argonauts on their quest fo ...

) *1964: ''Ya! Ya!'' (Argo) *1964: '' Off the Wall'' (Argo) with Joe Newman *1970: '' Ya! Ya!'' ( Black & Blue) *1974: '' The Dirty Old Men'' (Black & Blue) with Earl Hines – rereleased as ''Mr. Bechet'' *1978: ''In Memory of a Very Dear Friend'' (

Dragon A dragon is a Magic (supernatural), magical legendary creature that appears in the folklore of multiple cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but European dragon, dragons in Western cultures since the Hi ...

) *1984: ''The Ole Dude & The Fundance Kid'' ( Uptown) with Phil Woods

As sideman

With

Cannonball Adderley Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley (September 15, 1928August 8, 1975) was an American jazz Alto saxophone, alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s. Adderley is perhaps best remembered by the general public for the 1966 soul ...

*'' Domination'' (Capitol, 1965) With

*'' The Legend'' (Roulette, 1961) *'' Kansas City 8: Get Together'' (1979) With

*'' Miss Rhythm'' (Atlantic, 1959) With

Benny Carter Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career ...

*'' 'Live and Well in Japan!'' (Pablo Live, 1978) With

Roy Eldridge David Roy Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989), 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 ...

*'' What It's All About'' (Pablo, 1976) With

and

*'' First Time! The Count Meets the Duke'' (Columbia, 1961) With Gil Evans *'' Great Jazz Standards'' (Pacific Jazz, 1959) *'' Out of the Cool'' (Impulse!, 1960) With

*'' The Complete RCA Victor Recordings'' (Bluebird, 1937–1949 995 *'' Dee Gee Days: The Savoy Sessions'' (Savoy, 1951–1952 976 *'' Jazz Recital'' (Norgran, 1955) With

*'' Rainbow Mist'' (Delmark, 1944 992 compilation of Apollo recordings With Earl Hines *''The Father Jumps'' (Bluebird, 1939–1945 975 With

Claude Hopkins Claude Driskett Hopkins (August 24, 1903 – February 19, 1984) was an American jazz stride pianist and bandleader. Biography Claude Hopkins was born in Alexandria, Virginia, United States. Historians differ in respect of the actual date of his ...

* '' Swing Time!'' (Swingville, 1963) with

Vic Dickenson Victor Dickenson (August 6, 1906 – November 16, 1984) was an American jazz trombonist. His career began in the 1920s and continued through musical partnerships with Count Basie (1940–41), Sidney Bechet (1941), and Earl Hines. Life and car ...

With Etta Jones *'' Lonely and Blue'' (Prestige, 1962) With

*'' The Birth of a Band!'' (Mercury, 1959) *'' The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones'' (Mercury, 1959) *'' I Dig Dancers'' (Mercury, 1960) *'' Quincy Plays for Pussycats'' (Mercury, 1959–65 965 With

Jimmy McGriff James Harrell McGriff (April 3, 1936 – May 24, 2008) was an American hard bop and soul-jazz organist and organ trio bandleader. Biography Early years and influences Born in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, McGriff started playing pia ...

*'' The Big Band'' (Solid State, 1966) With Carmen McRae *'' Something to Swing About'' (Kapp, 1959) With

Bud Powell Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell (September 27, 1924 – July 31, 1966) was an American jazz pianist and composer. A pioneer in the development of bebop and its associated contributions to jazz theory,Grove Powell's application of complex phrasing to ...

*'' Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 1: Early Years of a Genius, 44–48'' (1948) With Carrie Smith *''Carrie Smith'' ( West 54 Records, 1978) With Jimmy Smith *''

Monster A monster is a type of imaginary or fictional creature found in literature, folklore, mythology, fiction and religion. They are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive, with a strange or grotesque appearance that causes Anxiety, terror ...

'' (Verve, 1965) With

Sonny Stitt Sonny Stitt (born Edward Hammond Boatner Jr.; February 2, 1924 – July 22, 1982) was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. Known for his warm tone, he was one of the best-documented saxophonists of his era, recording over ...

*'' Broadway Soul'' (Colpix, 1965) With Clark Terry *'' Color Changes'' (Candid, 1960) *'' Clark Terry Plays the Jazz Version of All American'' (Moodsville, 1962) With

*'' Ben Webster and Associates'' (Verve, 1959) With

Randy Weston Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston (April 6, 1926 – September 1, 2018) was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection. Weston's piano style owed much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious M ...

*'' Uhuru Afrika'' (Roulette, 1960) *''

Highlife Highlife is a Ghanaian music genre that originated along the coastal cities of present-day Ghana in the 19th century, during its Gold Coast (region), history as a colony of the British and through its trade routes in coastal areas. It encompasse ...

'' (Colpix, 1963) *'' Tanjah'' (Polydor, 1973)

As arranger

With

Jimmy Witherspoon James Witherspoon (August 8, 1920 – September 18, 1997) was an American jump blues and jazz singer. Early life, family and education Witherspoon was born in Gurdon, Arkansas. His father was a railroad worker who sang in local choirs, an ...

* '' Goin' to Kansas City Blues'' (RCA Victor, 1958) with

Jay McShann James Columbus "Jay" McShann (January 12, 1916 – December 7, 2006) was an American jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, and bandleader. He led bands in Kansas City, Missouri, that included Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson, Walter Brown, and B ...

References

External links

Budd Johnson
at

Discogs Discogs ( ; short for " discographies") is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. Database contents are user-generated, and described in ''T ...

.com * *
Budd Johnson manuscript scores collection

Institute of Jazz Studies The Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) is the largest and most comprehensive library and archives of jazz and jazz-related materials in the world. It is located on the fourth floor of the John Cotton Dana Library at Rutgers University–Newark in Ne ...

, Rutgers University
Albert J. "Budd" Johnson manuscript scores and other material, 1910–1984
a
Isham Memorial Library, Harvard University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Budd 1910 births 1984 deaths Swing clarinetists American jazz saxophonists American male saxophonists American jazz clarinetists Musicians from Dallas Riverside Records artists 20th-century American saxophonists Jazz musicians from Texas 20th-century American male musicians American male jazz musicians New York Jazz Repertory Company members Black & Blue Records artists Argo Records artists