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Budd Johnson


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1 hour ago, jeffcrom said:

R-3584363-1461537842-6146.jpeg.jpg

I discovered this thread while searching the internet for a picture of Budd's Off the Wall album, which I'm listening to now. So - Budd Johnson is special to me, because Ya! Ya! was the first jazz record I owned. I was 12 years old, and had taken up the saxophone in November, after moving to a new school. That Christmas, my mom got me this album, chosen from the cutout rack at Treasure Island department store in the Atlanta suburbs - presumably because there was a guy holding a saxophone on the cover.

I was pretty disappointed - she got my older brother a rock record. But I listened, and liked half of the tracks right away. And I blame this, my first jazz album, for my avant-garde-ish bent. On the last track of side one, "Exotique," Richard Davis plays a truly out-there bass solo, all bowed with slides and double-stops and quarter tones. I was too inexperienced a listener to know how strange it was - I just thought, "Oh, you can do that."

And the inner sleeve had tiny reproductions of 72 Argo album covers. (I'm looking at it now, and just counted them for the first time.) I pored over this sleeve for hours. I had never heard of any of these people, but somehow I knew that I needed to hear James Moody and The Jazztet and Al Grey and Sonny Yusef Lateef. And of course, I came to love the rest of Ya! Ya!, which still has an honored place on my record shelves.

Thanks, Mom.

Great reading, thank you.

I don´t have very much , the most significant things are his solos on Billy Eckstine´s "Blowin´the Blues aways" together with Gene Ammons ( lyrics by Eckstine: "blow Mr. Gene, blow Mr. Johnson too, maybe you can help me blowin´the blues away....." )

 

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11 hours ago, jeffcrom said:

R-3584363-1461537842-6146.jpeg.jpg

I discovered this thread while searching the internet for a picture of Budd's Off the Wall album, which I'm listening to now. So - Budd Johnson is special to me, because Ya! Ya! was the first jazz record I owned. I was 12 years old, and had taken up the saxophone in November, after moving to a new school. That Christmas, my mom got me this album, chosen from the cutout rack at Treasure Island department store in the Atlanta suburbs - presumably because there was a guy holding a saxophone on the cover.

I was pretty disappointed - she got my older brother a rock record. But I listened, and liked half of the tracks right away. And I blame this, my first jazz album, for my avant-garde-ish bent. On the last track of side one, "Exotique," Richard Davis plays a truly out-there bass solo, all bowed with slides and double-stops and quarter tones. I was too inexperienced a listener to know how strange it was - I just thought, "Oh, you can do that."

And the inner sleeve had tiny reproductions of 72 Argo album covers. (I'm looking at it now, and just counted them for the first time.) I pored over this sleeve for hours. I had never heard of any of these people, but somehow I knew that I needed to hear James Moody and The Jazztet and Al Grey and Sonny Yusef Lateef. And of course, I came to love the rest of Ya! Ya!, which still has an honored place on my record shelves.

Thanks, Mom.

Great memories. I only have a few of his, French Cooking’, Off the Wall and Budd Johnson and the Four Brass Giants. 

Edited by Brad
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I don't think anyone here mentioned the famous Coleman Hawkins Apollo recordings from February of 1944 (available on Delmark DD459). These titles, which are generally considered to be the very first bebop recordings, were all arranged by Budd Johnson, who is also part of the reed section along with Hawkins and Don Byas. Dizzy Gillespie is here as well. Budd Johnson was always in the vanguard of the music.

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5 minutes ago, Don Brown said:

I don't think anyone here mentioned the famous Coleman Hawkins Apollo recordings from February of 1944 (available on Delmark DD459). These titles, which are generally considered to be the very first bebop recordings, were all arranged by Budd Johnson, who is also part of the reed section along with Hawkins and Don Byas. Dizzy Gillespie is here as well. Budd Johnson was always in the vanguard of the music.

Yes Don,  Coleman Hawkins  -"Rainbow Mist" is a marvelous CD. By coincidence I just played it two days ago. 

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I had the same actually, one of the few jazz records in our household when I was a kid was John Coltrane's Kulu Se Mama which also had pictures of other Impulse albums on the inner sleeve... the name Yusef Lateef among these definitely raised my curiosity

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