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John Young


pryan

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Am currently listening to the Sonny Stitt/Zoot Sims Cadet Lp, INTER-ACTION, and John Young is the pianist. As soon as I heard his first solo, I knew I'd heard him before (it was on a Von Freeman live album). A very recognizable style, good accompanist, great soloist; he seems to use the whole keyboard. Anyways, there's not much about him on this BB, so I thought a thread would be nice.

BTW, here's AMG's page for Young: John Young

Edited by pryan
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I can't tell you right off hand how many records I've got w/John Young on them, but it's more than a handful, and he's a gas on every one of them. Totally got his own style, yet it seems definitively "Chicago", if that makes any sense. Just as Von Freeman embodies the "Chicago Tenor Sound", I think that John Young does the same for piano.

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John Young is also on that Atlantic Von Freeman session - 'Doin' It Right Now'. I like his piano playing on this one very much.

A good friend has sent me a bunch of live Von material, and Young John Young is on a whole bunch of it, much to my delight. I dig the guy's slyness, how he seems to be one of thee guys who watches and hears everything and everybody, and then coments on it allwhen he plays. Nothing has passed him by.

I wonder - is he old enough to have heard Earl Hines from the Grand Terrace days? I ask because there seems to be a lot of Hines in his "attitude", and, more specifically, some of his devices, notably the way he'll repeat a right hand pattern while playing stabbing melodies with his left. For that matter, Hines seems to have had an impact on many of the Chicago pianists who came up in Young's era and slightly after - that whole "trumpet style" right hand and such. But I'm no expert on this, so maybe I'm wrong.

As for recommendations, I honestly couldn't tell you what all I've got/heard with him on it. All I can say is that if John Young is on it, check it out. He's on a fair amount of Delmark thiings over the years, and Argo/Cadet (I think). Plus, he's on some of that Dex/Jug THE CHASE thing, which is "essential" for anybody even remotely into that kind of thing.

Bottom line - if you start hunting around for records with John Young on them, you'll inevitably end up hearing a great variety of the best that Chicago has had to offer over the last 50 or so years, which is to say some of the best that jazz has had to offer.

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I wonder - is he old enough to have heard Earl Hines from the Grand Terrace days? I ask because there seems to be a lot of Hines in his "attitude", and, more specifically, some of his devices, notably the way he'll repeat a right hand pattern while playing stabbing melodies with his left. For that matter, Hines seems to have had an impact on many of the Chicago pianists who came up in Young's era and slightly after - that whole "trumpet style" right hand and such. But I'm no expert on this, so maybe I'm wrong.

The strong Hines influence is correct. As I said, he joined Andy Kirk's band in '43, so that makes him old enough.

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  • 4 years later...

I also used him on my Eddie Johnson record - not on cd yet, but still available on vinyl.

He's also on Johnson's new Delmark side.

And that vinyl is not to be missed by fans of big-toned old-school tenor. Recommended.

Well, I've missed them!

But glad to hear about them now.

Chuck, what's the score on your Eddie Johnson album? CD, LP or zilch at present?

MG

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  • 1 year later...
  • 2 months later...

Up.

I'm listening to the Touch of Pepper LP on Argo-Cadet I got from Dan, and I love it. I first heard John Young on one of Chuck's Von Freeman LPs, and thought, damn I gotta get something with him as a leader. I highly recommend this one.

I'll double the rec for A TOUCH OF PEPPER. Probably going to use a cut off this for the upcoming Night Lights "Chicago Calling" sequel.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just found another John Young session I'd forgotten about. T-Bone Walker recorded in Chicago for Atlantic on 21 April 1955 and the band was Goon Gardner, Eddie Chamblee, McKinley Easton, Young, Ransome Knowling and Leroy Jackson. Real nice band. The material is on the album "T-bone Blues".

MG

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  • 2 weeks later...

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