A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, March 21, 2020
Johnny Hodges (1906-1970): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher
Possessor of the most beautiful tone ever heard in jazz, altoist Johnny Hodges
formed his style early on and had little reason to change it through
the decades. Although he could stomp with the best swing players and was
masterful on the blues, Hodges'
luscious playing on ballads has never been topped. He played drums and
piano early on before switching to soprano sax when he was 14. Hodges was taught and inspired by Sidney Bechet,
although he soon used alto as his main ax; he would regretfully drop
soprano altogether after 1940. His early experiences included playing
with Lloyd Scott, Chick Webb, Luckey Roberts, and Willie "The Lion" Smith (1924), and he also had the opportunity to work with Bechet. However, Johnny Hodges' real career began in 1928 when he joined Duke Ellington's orchestra. He quickly became one of the most important solo stars in the band and a real pacesetter on alto; Benny Carter was his only close competition in the 1930s. Hodges was featured on a countless number of performances with Ellington and also had many chances to lead recording dates with Ellington's sidemen. Whether it was "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," "Come Sunday," or "Passion Flower," Hodges was an indispensable member of Ellington's orchestra in the 1930s and '40s. It was therefore a shock, in 1951, when he decided to leave Duke Ellington and lead a band of his own. Hodges had a quick hit in "Castle Rock" (which ironically showcased Al Sears' tenor and had no real contribution by the altoist), but his combo ended up struggling and breaking up in 1955. Hodges' return to Duke Ellington was a joyous occasion and he never really left again. In the 1960s, Hodges teamed up with organist Wild Bill Davis on some sessions, leading to Davis joining Ellington for a time in 1969. Johnny Hodges, whose unchanging style always managed to sound fresh, was still with Duke Ellington when he suddenly died in 1970. https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/johnnyhodges
”Never the world's most highly animated
showman or greatest stage personality, but a tone so beautiful it
sometimes brought tears to the eyes, this was Johnny Hodges. Because of
this great loss, our band will never sound the same. Johnny Hodges
sometimes sounded beautiful, sometimes romantic, and sometimes people
spoke of his tone as being sensuous. With the exception of a year or so,
almost his entire career was with us. So far as our wonderful listening
audience was concerned, there was a great feeling of expectancy when
they looked up and saw Johnny Hodges sitting in the middle of the
saxophone section, in the front row. I am glad and thankful that I had
the privilege of presenting Johnny Hodges for forty years, night after
night. I imagine I have been much envied, but thanks to God....” Duke
Ellington eulogy.
John Cornelius Hodges was born on the 25th July
1906 in Cambridge, Mass. He started his musical career playing drums
and piano before taking up the saxophone at the age of 14, beginning on
the soprano and later the alto. Originally self-taught he was given
lessons by Sydney Bechet, whom he got to know through his sister. He
followed Bechet into Willie 'The Lion' Smith's quartet at the Rhythm
Club (around 1924), then played in the house band with Bechet's Club
‘Basha’ in Harlem. He continued to live in Boston and traveled to New
York at weekends playing with such musicians as Bobby Sawyer (1925),
Lloyd Scott (1926), then from late 1926 with the great Chick Webb at The
Paddock Club and The Savoy Ballroom, etc. followed by a short stint
with Luckey Roberts.
In May 1928 Johnny joined Duke Ellington's orchestra and
he remained a mainstay of the group for the next 40 years. From his
first recording in 1928 he revealed his authority and technical mastery
of the saxophone, playing with a broad, sweeping tone and producing
impressive, cascading runs. In the opinion of many people, he soon
became Duke's most valuable soloist. He made hundreds of recordings with
Duke and from 1937 led his own small studio group drawn from the
orchestra which made many successful series of recordings for Victor and
other labels. Titles included “Jeep's Blues,” “Hodge Podge,” “The Jeep
is Jumpin” all of which were co-written with Duke. Also in this period
of great creativity he played in many other small groups with musicians
such as Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, etc., producing classics of the
period.
Johnny was one of the many stars of the Ellington band of
the 40s producing solos of immense authority on songs such as “Things
Ain't What They Used To Be,” “Don't Get Around Much Any More,” “Passion
Flower,” etc. From the 40s he concentrated on the alto leaving the
soprano alone completely and in this period he regularly won the
popularity polls run by magazines such as Downbeat, Metronome, and
Esquire.
In March 1951 Johnny left Duke to form his own small
group taking with him Lawrence Brown and Sonny Greer and in their first
recording session they produced a hit record of “Castle Rock.” Johnny
disbanded the group in the spring of 1955 and after a brief spell of TV
work on the Ted Steele Show, rejoined Duke in August of that year where,
apart from a few brief periods, he remained for the rest of his life.
In the spring of 1958 he worked with Billy Strayhorn and in 1961 went to
Europe with some of the other band members in a group called The
Ellington Giants.
He continued to record prolifically with
musicians such as Wild Bill Davis, Earl Hines, and even one session with
Lawrence Welk. Duke and Billy Strayhorn continued to write compositions
and arrangements featuring Johnny's unique sound and talents leaving a
wonderful legacy of recorded music for the enjoyment of successive
generations of enthusiasts. He won the admiration of many saxophonists
such as Ben Webster and even John Coltrane who played in one of the
small groups in 1953-4 said that Johnny was always one of his favorite
players.
In his later years Johnny used fewer and fewer notes,
remaining close to the melody in ballads and improvising simple but
telling riffs on the faster numbers, many of which were based on the
blues . The power of his playing came from his sound and his soul,
generating immense swing and building the dramatic tension from chorus
to chorus. His last attempt at recording was the monumental “New Orleans
Suite,” but he would not live to see the final product.
Johnny Hodges died of a heart attack in New York City on the 11th May 1970. Source: James Nadal
Alto and soprano saxophonist Johnny Hodges was one of the most singular voices in jazz.
He didn’t play the horn as much as sing through it. He was also a somewhat inscrutable,
taciturn, and quiet man, with a relatively uneventful personal life.
Rabbit's Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges by Con Chapman 240 Pages ISBN: #9780190055288 Oxford University Press 2019
Alto
and soprano saxophonist Johnny Hodges was one of the most singular
voices in jazz. He didn't play the horn as much as sing through it.
Hodges made a large, long-term contribution to the music, both as a
member of the Duke Ellington
Orchestra and on his own. He was also a somewhat inscrutable, taciturn
and quiet man, with a relatively uneventful personal life. This makes
him a tough case for the would-be biographer, but author Con Chapman
carries off the task well. Anyone who spends several pages just parsing
out how Hodges got his nicknames (Little Caesar, Squatty Roo, Jeep, but
mostly, Rabbit) has things under control.
This is not really a
work that breaks a lot of new ground. There are no interviews conducted
by Chapman listed in the footnotes and it appears that the information
has been pieced together from secondary sources. However, in putting
together this biography, Chapman seems to have drawn on every source
that offers even the smallest shred of information about Hodges. His
authorial voice flows well and his attempts at interpreting Hodge's
motivations, understanding his personality and placing his contribution
in a wider context are viable.
Hodges, born in 1906, was originally a Cambridge/Boston
guy and one of the most interesting sections of the book is Chapman's
knowledgeable description of the local jazz scene in the 1910's and
'20s. Hodges was a musical prodigy (and a natural truant). He picked up
gigs as a pianist at rent parties at age 13, then started on the sax and
began gigging on that horn soon after. In the early 1920's, he
travelled back and forth in the "Boston-New York Pipeline," finally
moving to New York either in 1924, or 1925—Chapman relates conflicting
stories about this.
Chapman discusses what was a hot issue among
musicians in the NYC jazz melting pot of the 1920's: the difference
between "Eastern" style (New York City)
and "Western" (everywhere else). This is an interesting discussion; one
that potentially offers insights into the way jazz evolved. However,
the musicians quoted here offer up contradictory descriptions of each
style, which serve to obfuscate more than clarify. I'm not saying
Chapman didn't do his homework. This may just be a case of a subject
that is too complex and subjective to offer up neat conclusions.
When he was a soprano sax-playing teenager, Hodges had the chance to see and even meet Sidney Bechet,
who became an important early influence. Bechet later gave him a
soprano sax that he kept his whole life. Hodges took up the alto and it
was on that horn that he made his reputation. Interestingly, in 1940,
after Hodges had been with Ellington for more than a decade, he stopped
playing soprano in the orchestra. The reason? He wanted double pay for
playing alto and soprano and Ellington wouldn't give it to him. For many
years, Hodges was the best-paid member of Ellington's group, but their
relationship, as told by Chapman, was a complicated one. One part of
this was money. The other seems to have been sex and jealousy. Ellington
was always surrounded by women and Hodges wasn't. One could say
Ellington was successful with women because of his looks and status
and/or because he bound mistresses to himself by providing financial
benefits. However one puts it, Hodges was apparently less successful in
this respect. He was short of stature and less handsome. Further, Hodges
seemed galled that the deeply romantic quality of his playing seemed to
provoke swoons, but not that much carnal activity.
It should
also be noted that Hodges never became a great reader (sight reader of
music) and he occasionally clashed with Ellington when he thought
Ellington's charts had strayed too far away from the blues, ballads and
the foundational style that made the orchestra famous.
Hodges'
sound gets full due in this biography, as it should. Hodges was a great
player at any tempo, but at slow tempos, he was able to shape sound in a
way that no one else ever has. Chapman makes an interesting conjecture
that the Ellington band was able to avoid having to hire a vocalist for
many years because the song-like playing of Hodges fulfilled the
emotional space that would have been taken up by a singer.
Hodges' main competitor for primacy on alto sax was Benny Carter.
One can say that their sound was in the same "family," although very
different. In the late 1920's through the 1940's, most alto sax players
(and some tenor sax players) modeled their playing after one of those
guys—or possibly saxophonist Willie Smith. In all three cases,
sound-tone was the most important element. A clear marker in jazz
occurred when the influence of these players diminished, almost
disappeared in fact, under the onslaught of Charlie Parker,
who was less about a "pure" sound than about notes, harmony and
velocity. Parker's influence built during the course of the 1940's,
until, by 1950, he had become "The Man."
John Coltrane spent
half a year playing in a Hodges band in 1952, which allows Chapman to
spend some time on how Trane wrestled with his own sound. He notes sweet
tooth problems that impacted Coltrane's embouchure (Butter Rum Life
Savers were the main culprit) and quotes Hodges saying that Trane was
"having his teeth fixed all the time" and that Coltrane "came to fear
the drill so much that it sometimes took two or more assistants to hold
him in the [dentist's] chair."
I think most jazz people would
find this and a number of other incidents and stories in the book
fascinating. One such story concerns jukeboxes, which proliferated in
the mid-1930's. Ellington had been recording for the Brunswick label,
which charged $0.75 per disc. Competing labels charged only $0.35 retail
and $0.19 wholesale. This priced Ellington's music out of the market.
Helen Oakley, a major if unknown force in jazz at this time, was hired
by Ellington at the suggestion of his manager Irving Mills to put
together sessions featuring sub-groups from the Ellington band to record
for the lower-priced Varsity Record label. These recordings made
Ellington's musicians a force in the jukebox trade and were also an
aesthetic success.
A similarly interesting story is told about
the effect of the imposition of the Cabaret Tax in 1944. This tax was
levied on any NYC venue that served food, drink and that allowed
dancing. It was a 30% tax, which was then lowered to 20%—still
significant. This tax was obviously an incentive for venues to hire
music only for listening, not dancing and this, in turn, paved the way
for bebop music. One didn't find any dancing joints on 52nd St.
There
are times when I got frustrated by Chapman's idiosyncratic approach to
chronology and a lack of dates being attached to certain events. Also,
there is no discography and no index. However, I'm working off an
advance copy and those elements may appear in the final version of the
book.
As I said at the top of the review, Hodges was a man of
relatively few words and many of those seemed contradictory. So, like a
painter whose subject refuses to sit for long, Chapman is forced to limn
Hodges' personality in relatively few lines, using dark and shadow to
try and bring out hidden emotional corners. However, Hodges' music is
what chiefly concerns us and although lacking a few "why's," Chapman
does a thorough job of the "who's," "what's" and "where's."
Chapman
bemoans aspects of the change to saxophone playing wrought by Charlie
Parker, saying that after Parker: "the kingdom of the alto was divided
in two—like King Lear's Britain." On one side, you had the few following
in the sonic wake of Hodges—Paul Desmond and Art Pepper,
for example, and on the other, you had almost everyone else. It led, he
says, to a diminution of the emotions that were expressed in jazz.
There are those who demur, believing that Hodges' playing sometimes
veered toward schmaltz, and citing a record he made with the Lawrence
Welk band in 1965. In fact, both Hodges and Ellington liked and admired
Welk's band (as Louis Armstrong liked Guy Lombardo and Ray Charles
liked Jackie Gleason's easy listening albums). My own opinion aligns
with Chapman's assessment of his playing: "Hodges... kept his tenderness
in reserve—never laying it on too thick—and used technique to express
emotions without maudlin flourishes."
Johnny Hodges' record as
Ellington stalwart, bandleader and recording maestro speaks, no—it
sings, for itself and this biography brings you closer to the song.
There’s a big difference between the two greatest jazz stars on the
alto horn. Charlie Parker had imitators without number; Johnny Hodges
was simply inimitable. Parker, known as Bird, broke frontiers of speed,
harmonic invention, and all-round excitement. Hodges, known as Rabbit,
or Jeep, is best known for blues feeling, storytelling, and the sheer
beauty of his sound and tone, in all the varieties and moods
that could come out of an alto saxophone, at different moments lyrical,
earthy, elegiac, and sensual. Hodges said he liked the idea of making
“alley music,” yet he could sound like a whisper to your heart, as
well. This hour it’s Johnny Hodges’s turn, on the occasion of Con
Chapman’s biography of him.
Johnny Hodges, right, plays alongside Al Sears in 1946.
Out of another age in high pop culture, we’re rediscovering songs
without words this hour, from an expressionless man—until the moment he
picked up his horn. From the 1920s into 1970, four decades, Johnny
Hodges was the standby solo star in Duke Ellington’s jazz orchestra.
Other bandleaders said Duke could afford not to feature a boy singer or a
girl singer, as they were known then, because he had Hodges in his
band. Johnny Hodges’s voice came in three registers: blues, ballads and, a
rarity in jazz, the art song. That sound of Johnny Hodges is the thread,
the plot of this radio hour: about a forgotten grand master of American
music whose biography has finally been written: Rabbit’s Blues
from the Oxford University Press, by a Boston lawyer and fellow Hodges
cultist, Con Chapman. It’s an overdue account of an artist who barely
spoke but stirred hearts his own way, not so unlike Charlie Chaplin or
the other silent movie star Buster Keaton, known as “the great stone
face”—which described Hodges as well. What Johnny Hodges did was
liberate and lift Adolph Sax’s mid-range horn out of the marching-band,
into the far upper reaches of solo expression. And he played it with “a
tone so beautiful,” Duke Ellington said, “it sometimes brought tears to
the eyes.”
In Boston, Hodges played at venues like the Black and White Club and Hotel Avery.
We’re close-listening to Hodges’s wide range of music—and taking a
tour of the neighborhood where he hatched his sound. Long-time community
activist and former state representative Byron Rushing is our guide.
He’s walking us back into the intellectual and cultural cauldron of
Hodges’ youth, a scene that included fellow saxophonist Harry Carney as
well as journalist William Monroe Trotter and the painter Allan Crite. We’re joined also by Robin D.G. Kelley, the preeminent historian and biographer of Thelonious Monk.
On
Sussex Street in the South End of Boston, Chris meets up with Byron
Rushing, who says the small brick houses and apartments in the area here
were originally “built for the working class.”
Thank you for listening. The YouTube playlist here and below contains (most of) the Hodges tracks contained in the the program. You can find an excerpt of Chapman’s new book here.
Guest List:
Con Chapman
Biographer of Johnny Hodges.
Byron Rushing Former Massachusetts State Representative.
Robin Kelley
Distinguished Professor of History at UCLA.
A new biography on Hodges takes a brief look at this rivalry from jazz's golden age
by Con Chapman
JazzTimes
Left
to right: Benny Carter, Duke Ellington, and Johnny Hodges at the
Newport Jazz Festival, July 6, 1968 (photo: Tom Copi/Michael Ochs
Archives/Getty Images)
When Johnny Hodges
moved from Boston to New York in the twenties, he began to make the
rounds to see where he stood in the pecking order of alto saxes. One
night in 1927 at a basement club on 7th Avenue, he heard a man whom he
had met two years before in Saratoga Springs, New York, when they were
both in that resort town playing summer gigs. Hodges was impressed
enough to tell Charlie Holmes, a fellow altoist from Boston, to go “to
Small’s Paradise and hear the greatest alto saxophone player in the
world.” He was referring to Benny Carter, whom most would rank as Hodges’ only genuine rival on the alto over the next two decades. Over the course of their careers, Carter and Hodges would
frequently be linked. Benny Goodman listed the two as the top altos of
the day, and Ben Webster, whose mature style was formed in part by
imitation of Hodges, ranked Carter and Hodges among the top three saxes
of his era, along with Coleman Hawkins. They may have been together at the top, but they were different.
Carter was better trained musically, but his tone was thinner, less
viscous than Hodges, and so while Carter’s solos are models of harmonic
development, they pack less of a wallop (to these ears) than Hodges’
emotional punch. Who was better? It is largely—but not entirely—a matter of taste.
Carter was “the most admired alto saxophonist of the thirties,” wrote
Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker, “but that was hardly
surprising” since, in his view “Johnny Hodges didn’t draw himself up to
his full height until 1940.” Jazz scholar Martin Williams expressed his
preference by saying “Johnny Hodges can play the blues; Benny Carter
not.” But Carter was Hodges’ superior in terms of melodic invention and
harmonic complexity. Benny Waters, who knew both men well, recalled a
late-night cutting contest among Hodges, Carter and Jimmy Dorsey, at the
time a more established figure than either. On the night in question,
according to Waters, “Dorsey … came up to Harlem to jam with the best
black alto saxmen.” Dorsey cut Johnny Hodges because, as Waters put it,
Dorsey “knew a little bit more harmony than Johnny. Johnny, in his
harmony, wasn’t too advanced.” Then, according to Waters, somebody said, “Call up Benny Carter” … Benny started playing
“Georgia Brown,” and … every four bars [Carter would] move into a
different key. Waters said Dorsey “got all red in the face and practically
hauled up and walked out—looked like a drowned rat,” leaving
Carter—whose nickname was “The King”—the winner. While Dorsey cut Hodges
that night, with Carter’s encouragement he came back to win a rematch,
again according to Waters:
Johnny was very upset, but Benny Carter told him not to worry, he’d get him the next time he showed up. [W]hen Dorsey came back the next week … [t]hey did “Tiger Rag” and Benny suggested they do four choruses, taking it through the keys. When they got to B major [five sharps], Jimmy got his ass kicked. Perhaps Hodges developed his facility playing in the key of B at
house-rent parties in Boston, where—Charlie Holmes recalled—the pianist
was expected to play “in either F sharp or B natural. That’s all they’d
play, on all the black notes, you know. And Johnny would take his horn
out, without knowing about the keys, and just blow in any key.” Hodges went on to become the first among equals in the Ellington orchestra,
taking three solos to every one that the Duke gave to any other
musician. Carter, on the other hand, made the fateful decision to spend
the years from 1935 to 1938 in Europe. He ultimately decided to return
to America for artistic reasons, saying, “I don’t hear enough decent
music to inspire me at all and I think what keeps me going now is the
anticipation of my return to America. I really don’t want to get too far
behind.” Like many other expatriate American jazzmen, Carter found the
more congenial racial attitude and higher acclaim given to jazz
musicians overseas to be a tonic, but at the same time he began to
thirst for the purer springs of his chosen art form back home. Despite his admiration for Carter, there are signs that Hodges
ultimately developed feelings of professional envy towards him. Carter
was not just a musician but also a successful arranger, composer and
bandleader, and thus achieved something Hodges didn’t; independence,
both artistic and financial, from a bandleader. Jazzbos who rated
intellect above emotion tended to favor Carter, as evidenced by some
doggerel comparing the two that appeared in a 1942 issue of Swing magazine over the nom de plume “Snooty McSiegle”: Johnny HodgesSounds gorgeous.He knows how to jump it.But Benny CarterIs smarter.He doubles on trumpet. Carter was deferential to Hodges in some areas, such as the slow
numbers in the Ellington repertoire; in 1977 at a performance in London,
Carter stopped the pianist when he played two choruses of
“Sophisticated Lady,” saying he “didn’t like to play that particular
Ellington so closely associated with Johnny Hodges because the audience
was expecting to hear it as Johnny did it. I knew I couldn’t satisfy
those who wanted it played as Johnny would have done it.”
Benny Carter, doubling on trumpet
at the Apollo Theater, New York,
October 1946 (photo: William P.
Gottlieb Collection/Library of Congress)
In 1968 Hodges and Carter appeared together at the Newport Jazz
Festival along with Ellington and his rhythm section. Like many all-star
aggregations, this one didn’t live up to its promise. Ellington and
Carter shared a dressing room, which Hodges entered before the
performance to ask, “What are we going to play?” Ellington answered, “I
don’t know.” Ellington faced a looming deadline for a magazine article,
and after musing to himself, turned to Stanley Dance, the Boswell to his
Samuel Johnson, and said, “Write this down for me, please: ‘When a
symphony man wants to know about jazz, he goes to Benny Carter. When a
jazz man wants to know about the symphony, he goes to Benny Carter.’” Ellington used the same words to introduce Carter a few moments
later, but as the three stood in the wings he repeated to Hodges and
Carter that he didn’t know what they would play. Once they were on
stage, Ellington called for “Satin Doll,” then “Take the A Train.”
Carter looked mystified, and played in a confused manner. Ellington then
played a blues on which Carter and Hodges traded riffs, then two more
tunes from the band’s regular repertoire. The set ended with a new
number that Ellington’s small group had only begun to play recently, on
which Carter trailed along with the help of a hastily produced lead
sheet. The set was, in the words of two jazz critics who were present,
“shameful” and “the height of ineptness.” Carter, known for his
gentlemanly demeanor and unwillingness to say anything negative about
another jazzman was, as always, courtly and conciliatory: “Puzzling
things occasionally take place on the bandstand when mixed units are put
together hurriedly … I just try to play my part without worrying about
anything else. I don’t think Duke or Johnny meant to be rude.” For
whatever reason, Ellington seemed to have ambivalent feelings about
Carter; while publicly praising him, when it came time to write his
autobiography, he mentioned Carter only once and left him off a list of
innovators on the saxophone. Hodges may have been innocent in that incident, but he seemed
guilty of rudeness towards Carter on another occasion, when Ellington
needed a second alto at a Reno, Nevada gig in 1968. He called Carter and
asked him (perhaps disingenuously) if he knew of anyone who was
available. When Carter offered his own services, Ellington said he
couldn’t afford him, but Carter said he’d do the gig “for kicks” if Duke
would cover his expenses.
Hodges playing a Conn 6M alto saxophonewith Al Sears in background, 1946
Cornelius "Johnny" Hodges (July 25, 1907 – May 11, 1970) was an American alto saxophonist, best known for solo work with Duke Ellington's big band. He played lead alto in the saxophone section for many years. Hodges was also featured on soprano saxophone, but refused to play soprano after 1946.[1] He is considered one of the definitive alto saxophone players of the big band era (along withBenny Carter).[2]
After beginning his career as a teenager in Boston, Hodges began to travel to New York and played with Lloyd Scott, Sidney Bechet, Luckey Roberts and Chick Webb. When Ellington wanted to expand his band in 1928, Ellington's clarinet player Barney Bigard
recommended Hodges. His playing became one of the identifying voices of
the Ellington orchestra. From 1951 to 1955, Hodges left the Duke to
lead his own band, but returned shortly before Ellington's triumphant
return to prominence – the orchestra's performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival.
Biography
Early life
Hodges was born in the Cambridgeport neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to John H. Hodges and Katie Swan Hodges, both originally from Virginia.[2] After moving for a short period of time to North Cambridge,[1] the family moved to Hammond Street in the South End of Boston, where he grew up with baritone saxophonist Harry Carney, and saxophonists Charlie Holmes and Howard E. Johnson.[2] His first instruments were drums and piano. While his mother was a skilled piano player, Hodges was mostly self-taught.[2] Once he became good enough, he played the piano at dances in private homes for eight dollars an evening.[2]
He had taken up the soprano saxophone by his teens. It was around this
time that Hodges developed the nickname "Rabbit", which some people
believe arose from his ability to win 100-yard dashes and outrun truant
officers, while others, including Carney, said he was called by that
name because of his rabbit-like nibbling on lettuce and tomato
sandwiches.[2][3] When Hodges was 14 he went with his eldest sister to see Sidney Bechet play in Jimmy Cooper's Black and White Revue in a Boston burlesque hall.[2]
Hodges' eldest sister introduced him to Bechet, who asked him to play
something on the soprano saxophone he had brought with him. Hodges
played "My Honey's Lovin' Arms" for Bechet,[2]
who was impressed with his skill and encouraged him to keep on playing.
Hodges built a name for himself in the Boston area before moving to New
York in 1924.[2]
Duke Ellington
Hodges joined Duke Ellington's orchestra in November 1928. He was one of the prominent Ellington Band members who featured in Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. Goodman described Hodges as "by far the greatest man on alto sax that I ever heard."[4]Charlie Parker called him "the Lily Pons of his instrument."[5]
In performance:
Johnny Hodges, Frankfurt Germany, February 6,1965.
Ellington's practice of writing tunes specifically for members of his
orchestra resulted in the Hodges specialties, "Confab with Rab",
"Jeep's Blues", "Sultry Sunset", and "Hodge Podge". Other songs recorded
by the Ellington Orchestra which prominently feature Hodges' smooth
alto saxophone sound are "Magenta Haze", "Prelude to a Kiss", "Haupe" (from Anatomy of a Murder) – also notable are the "seductive" and hip-swaying "Flirtibird", featuring the "irresistibly salacious tremor" by Hodges,[6] "The Star-Crossed Lovers" from Ellington's Such Sweet Thunder suite, "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)", "Blood Count" and "Passion Flower".
He had a pure tone and economy of melody on both the blues and ballads that won him admiration from musicians of all eras and styles, from Ben Webster and John Coltrane, who both played with him when he had his own orchestra in the 1950s, to Lawrence Welk, who featured him in an album of standards. His highly individualistic playing style, which featured the use of a wide vibrato
and much sliding between slurred notes, was frequently imitated. As
evidenced by the Ellington compositions named after him, he earned the
nicknames Jeep[7] and Rabbit – according to Johnny Griffin because "he looked like a rabbit, no expression on his face while he's playing all this beautiful music."[8]
Saxophones
In the 1940s, Hodges played a Conn 6M (recognizable by its underslung neck) and later on a Buescher 400
(recognizable by its V-shaped bell-brace) alto saxophone. By the end of
his career in the late 1960s, Hodges was playing a Vito LeBlanc
Rationale alto (serial number 2551A), an instrument with unusual
key-mechanisms (providing various alternative fingerings) and tone-hole
placement, which gave superior intonation. Fewer than 2,000 were ever
made. Hodges' Vito saxophone was silver-plated and extensively engraved
on the bell, bow, body and key-cups of the instrument.[9]
Death
Hodges' last performances were at the Imperial Room in Toronto, less than a week before his May 11, 1970 death from a heart attack, suffered during a visit to the office of a dental surgeon. His last recordings are featured on the New Orleans Suite,
which was only half-finished when he died. He was married twice; he had
a daughter by his first wife, Bertha Pettiford, and a son (John C.
Hodges II) and a daughter (Lorna Lee) by his second wife, Edith Cue.[10] The loss of Hodges' sound prompted Ellington, upon learning of the musician's death from a heart attack, to lament to JET
magazine: "The band will never sound the same without Johnny." In
Ellington's eulogy of Hodges, he said: "Never the world's most highly
animated showman or greatest stage personality, but a tone so beautiful
it sometimes brought tears to the eyes—this was Johnny Hodges. This is Johnny Hodges."[11]
Hodges was not a member of Ellington's Orchestra before 1928,
during 1951–55 and after May 11, 1970, when Hodges died. Duke
Ellington's earliest recordings date from 1924 and he died on May 24,
1974. The two men's discographies are thus almost synonymous, bar
exceptions listed above and in this section.
Alternative Names:
John Cornelius Hodges, Jeep and Rabbit Hodges
Johnny Hodges (born July 25, 1906, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.—died May 11, 1970, New York, N.Y.), American jazz saxophonist who was a featured soloist in Duke Ellington’s
orchestra. Renowned for the beauty of his tone and his mastery of
ballads, Hodges was among the most influential sax players in the
history of jazz. Initially Hodges was a self-taught musician, playing drums and piano before taking up the soprano saxophone at age 14. He then received instruction from the legendary Sidney Bechet, one of the first important jazz soloists and perhaps Hodges’s only major influence. He worked in Boston and New York during the mid-1920s, playing in bands led by Lloyd Scott, Chick Webb,
Bobby Sawyer, Luckey Roberts, and Bechet. He joined Duke Ellington’s
orchestra in 1928 and was the band’s most-featured soloist for the next
four decades. Hodges
played lead alto in Ellington’s sax section; his melody lines were an
important component in the band’s palette of sounds. He was featured on
countless Ellington recordings, demonstrating his skill at ballads
(“Warm Valley,” “Passion Flower,” “In a Sentimental Mood”) and up-tempo
numbers (“Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” “The Jeep Is Jumpin’”). He
projected sensuous elegance through a commanding sound and perfected
the use of portamento
(or “smearing” in jazz vernacular), in which the instrument glides from
note to note in the manner of a slide trombone. His basic style did not
change throughout the years, but his considerable technique and
harmonic sense ensured that his solos always sounded fresh and
contemporary. Hodges
was so closely associated with Ellington that jazz fans were taken by
surprise when he left the band in 1951 to form his own combo. Other
Ellington veterans such as Lawrence Brown and Sonny Greer, as well as
the young John Coltrane, played in Hodges’s band. They had one hit recording, “Castle Rock,” but lasting success proved elusive,
and they disbanded in 1955. Hodges rejoined the Ellington orchestra and
remained with Ellington until his death, although he continued to
engage in side projects and lead occasional recording sessions under his
own name.
Hodges’s influence was so pervasive
in American jazz that subsequent generations of saxophone players, even
those who never heard him play, have emulated his style. He was a true
original, about whom Ellington once said: “Johnny Hodges has complete
independence of expression. He says what he wants to say on the horn,…in
his language, from his perspective.”
Never the world’s most highly animated showman or greatest stage
personality, but a tone so beautiful it sometimes brought tears to the
eyes – this was Johnny Hodges. This is Johnny Hodges.” – Duke Ellington’s eulogy for Johnny Hodges. Born on 25 July 1907, Hodges was a saxophonist of considerable
authority when playing with a band, he possessed technical mastery of
his instrument an individualistic style and use of vibrato that made him
admired by many. His sax playing had a beautiful tone and he was able
to play long flowing runs like few others. His playing of the blues was
particularly sensuous and his way with a ballad made him the
quintessential Ellington sideman and an in demand player to accompany
others. After learning to play both piano and drums he first played soprano
sax before becoming a specialist with the alto saxophone. He went to New
York while still in his teens where he played with a few bands; having
been inspired by Sidney Bechet he also took guidance from the jazz
pioneer. Johnny joined Duke Ellington’s Orchestra in 1928, playing on his
first record in March and from the very first he became pivitol to the
Ellington sound as well as co-writing some of Duke’s recordings. He
toured Europe with Ellington in both 1933 and 1939, and three years
later he played on the classic, ‘Things Ain’t What They Used To Be’
helping to make it so distinctive as well as a big hit record. After playing on so many wonderful Ellington records Hodges left in
1951 to work within a small group environment, something he had already
done within the Ellington organization. His first session for Norgran
was in January along with two other Ellingtonians, trombonist Lawrence
Brown and Duke’s long serving drummer, Sonny Greer. The album was called
Castle Rock, the title track was a hit single and the album
was later reissued on Verve. A month later the same players recorded an
album entitles, Memories of Ellington that was reissued as In A Mellow Tone by Verve Over the next decade or so Johnny recorded a lot of albums for both Norgran and Verve. Among the highlights were Ellingtonia ’56, Johnny Hodges with Billy Strayhorn and the Orchestra and The Big Sound. He also worked with Ellington himself and recorded Duke Ellington And Johnny Hodges Play The Blues – Back To Back and Duke Ellington And Johnny Hodges Side by Side that show off the wonderful musicianship of the long time colleagues. In the early 1960s, he rejoined Ellington’s band and was in the studio when Duke and Frank Sinatra recorded the album, Francis A And Edward K
in December 1967. Among the songs they recorded was the beautiful
‘Indian Summer’ with a sumptuous Billy May arrangement. It is among the
best songs Sinatra recorded for Reprise and Johnny Hodges sax solo
certainly adds to the overall effect. So enthralled was Sinatra during
its recording that when it ends he’s half a second late in coming in to
sing. Hodges last appearance was at the Imperial Room in Toronto, less than
a week before his death, on 11 May 1970. He suffered a heart attack
during a visit to his dental surgeon in May 1970. Hodges performance on
Sinatra’s record was a fitting elegy to a great saxophonist. Listen to the best of Johnny Hodges on Apple Music and Spotify.
Johnny
Hodges, a longtime alto saxophonist with Duke El lington's band, died
yesterday in Manhattan. He had collapsed in a dentist's office. He was
63, years old and lived at 170 West End Avenue.
John
Cornelius Hodges was considered one of the great early soloists in
jazz, a man whose lush, romantic style was familiar to thousands who
heard him play with Duke
Ellington.
Born
in Cambridge, Mass., on July 25, 1906, Johnny Hodges, or “Rabbit” as he
was nick named, started out as a self taught musician. As a youth, he
received his first saxophone from Sidney Bechet, the famed New Orleans
jazzman who also gave him lessons.
After
playing with several bands in the early twenties he joined the
Ellington band in 1928. With the exception of five years during the
early fifties when he formed his own group, Mr. Hodges stayed with the
Duke for the rest of his career.
Know For Slow Technique
In
his early years with the Ellington band, Mr. Hodges be came famous for
his swinging style. In the middle thir ties he developed the slow
melodic tone that was to be come his hallmark. He was featured in
hundred of record ings with the Ellington band and others, and was a
Down Beat poll winner in every year from 1940 through 1949.
Mr. Hodges recently com pleted a long tour of the Far East with the Ellington band.
Always
a favorite with jazz listeners, Mr. Hodges was also highly regarded by
critics. One English jazz critic wrote that “he seems to have an
inexhaust ible supply of ravishing melodic phrases in all moods and
tempos.”
Survivors include his widow, Ethel (Cue) Hodges, with whom he composed several pieces; a son and a daughter.
"Tell
'em what happened! Tell ‘em what happened!” Duke Ellington exhorts
Johnny "Jeep" Hodges in this 1957 performance of “Jeep’s Blues,” at a
dance concert in Carrolton, Pennsylvania. A
classic of small group Ellingtonia, the tune was introduced in 1939 on a
session under Hodges' nominal leadership. Played at Carrolton
one-nighter eleven months after its most famous rendering at the 1956
Newport Jazz Festival, this version is Newport's equal and has the added
profundity of Duke’s introduction. “If you’ve heard of the saxophone,
ladies and gentlemen, then you’ve heard of Johnny Hodges.”
Johnny Hodges
Released for the first time in 1983, the All-Star Road Band
album drew high praise from Ellington aficionados worldwide, and
motivated John S. Wilson in The New York Times to write that it captured
the band “vividly alive,” and conveyed Ellington’s “personal and
musical charisma for those who missed him.” As for Hodges, this is
declamatory preaching of the highest calling, with Ellington’s
accompaniment prompting and cushioning his star soloist, and the
ensemble, especially in quiet passages, intoning like a choir. Who needs
a narrative with lyricism of this order?
We all have our influences: Duke Ellington had his Fats Waller influence, his James P. Johnson influence and he is a great admirer of Willie ‘The Lion' Smith but Sidney Bechet is tops in my book—he was my favourite! He schooled me a whole lot and I’ll say that if it hadn’t been for him, I’d probably just be playing for a hobby, not even professionally.
I met him first in Boston. He was playing with a burlesque show called Jimmy Cooper’s ’Black and White Show’ and I went backstage and asked to see him. I had a little soprano tucked under my arm, wrapped up in a cloth bag and told him I was interested in the saxophone, so he asked me to play one so I took out this old’ horn and played one. I had no idea I was going to go to New York at any time later. In the meantime I used to listen to records of his, Clarence Williams and His Blue Five; Louis Armstrong was in the band at that particular time. So I went to New York for a visit, and got a job playin' in a little ol’ cabaret at 135th Street. It was called ‘Fritz’ ... I think. I got $25.00 a week and I made about $25 to $30 a night tips.
Bechet had a club that he was going to open at 145th Street called Club Bechet and he came by one night and approached me and said he wanted me in this band right away! That was my big chance so I quit 'Fritz' and went to work for him. And it was then he used to show me different things on the soprano. We played together sometimes, but I don’t think very many people would remember that. I think it was I Found A New Baby or Everybody Loves My Baby, but I’m not quite sure which, but this was one of the things he taught me. You see, each club used to go to the Lafayette Theatre every Friday at the midnight show and advertise. Now they'd bring their whole show and, you know, the band and everything, and do a couple of acts. Fats Waller was playing organ at the time. This was all free, you didn’t get paid for this it was just all advertisement for your club. So Bechet and I did this duet, (I Found A New Baby or Everybody Loves My Baby) and that was one of the duets we played together. Before we recorded The Sheik he taught me the saxophone chorus—we spent a week in Philadelphia and he made me play it over and over, until finally we recorded it. I would like to make a record with soprano again but it is a funny instrument you know You just can’t pick it up today and put it down tomorrow and go back and play it. So I’ll have to do a little woodsheddin’ before I make this record but anyhow I intend to do it sometime sooner or later.
Back in the 20’s Carney lived about three blocks from me. I lived on Hammer Street and he lived on Connaught Street—this was in ’25 in Boston. Harry was just playing alto at that particular time. I don’t think he joined Duke’s band until he decided to play baritone. He also used to play piano, but as he says nobody else plays piano in Duke’s band!
Well, I used to go to New York for a visit, with no intention of staying and I would pick up these jobs just for the ideas, you know. It was very easy to get a job then. You'd work in a dancing school and you'd go to a jam session. They didn’t call them jam sessions then, they used to call them ‘cuttin’ contests’, and you would learn a whole lot from the different saxophone players, trumpet players, and trombone players who would come in and play all night long. You would get cut and when you got cut you went to ‘school’. So I went back to Boston and showed them what I had learned. They would all meet in my home, Harry Carney, and Charlie Holmes and some others and we would compare notes—what was new in New York and what had happened behind in Boston.
So I'd make this trip to New York every two weeks and stay over a weekend, or four or five days. Gee, there was a club on every corner in those days—there were five clubs on 134th Street. There were Small’s, Leroy’s, The Owl and Fritz’, and Connie’s—this was all in one block.
Around 1926 I joined Chick Webb, and was with him for a while. He had a terrific band.
He started with seven men and went to eight when he went to the Savoy, where after a while, I left him. He enlarged his band to ten and later on he picked up Ella Fitzgerald and that was it. I joined Duke in ’28. It was on my sister’s birthday, May 18th which is also my son’s birthday, a day to remember. I replaced Otto Hardwick; ‘Professor Booze’ they called him. He was terrific. There was no man in the world I know who could master the high notes like him.
In those days we had two different styles. Until Otto left, if you notice, during those years, I very seldom played anything slow. They were all peppy and fast tunes. As I said before. Otto Hardwick was a master of these high notes, hittin’ off them and slidin’ off them, so what happened was that Duke threw it all on me and I had to go and rehearse this thing and try to get as close to him as I possibly could. He was always first alto. As it is now, Procope and I alternate for first part. Some fit him and some fit me, so we switch back and forth like that.
I wanna do this thing soon. Four numbers on soprano and four on alto, all in one album. I want to take my time and pick out things that everybody knows. Some well known standards and probably a couple of originals. Tunes like It Don’t Mean A Thing. I used to play the verse, but I don’t think I’d be able to play it now, it has been so long. I don't think anybody in the band remembers it and we’d have a hard time findin' the music. We’ve had so many arrangements of It Don’t Mean A Thing, one for Ivy, one for Ray Nance, one for A1 Sears when he was in the band, and one for Ben Webster. It’s the same thing for Sophisticated Lady, we have so many arrangements. And so many arrangements of Main Stem and so many arrangements of Mood Indigo. The book is enormous!
When we’re playin’ a club it doesn’t matter for we have a pretty good idea of what we’re going to play. You know you’re going to play A Train. you know you’re goin’ to play Mood Indigo, you know you’re goin’ to play Sophisticated Lady, you know you’re goin’ to play Things Ain’t What They Used To Be, I Got It Bad; you know that’s all comin’. I know I’m goin’ to play All Of Me and Passion Flower, and that Duke will have to play his albums, ‘Ellington ’65', ‘Ellington ’66’. People want to hear them and he has to put them in sometime, the first show, or the second show, so you get all that up together and put it on your music stand.
I used to like picking music for my band, with Lawrence Brown, Emmett Berry, Harold Francis, Arthur Clark, Allan Walker, and Barney Richmond. I had formed the group in 1951 and kept them until ’55. Then I went to a T.V. show with Ted Steele, Cozy Cole and Jonah Jones. We only played from three ’til five, five days a week. That was nice. I used to come on at four and I got so that I used to pick out the numbers to play. I wanted to play one fast number and one slow number so it got to the point where I got some real elderly fans, these sewing circle people, you know. These women that was at home doing the sewin’, and washin’ and things like that, and these people that had club meetings. So, at four o’clock every day, I had to play some kind of a slow pretty number for these people in New Jersey.
I once listed in an article my favourite Duke Ellington records, they were Braggin’ In Brass; All Too Soon; Flamingo; Jack The Bear and Rocks In My Bed. But I’d probably add to it now. I like some of these things that Duke made with ’Ellington ’65’, ‘Ellington ’63’ and I like the ‘Marv Poppins' album very much too, I was surprised with that. We made A Little Spoonful Of Sugar that I had to play. When we made this thing, we didn’t know what we were doin’, just figurin’ we’d run two minutes of this and two minutes of that, and when it was released it sounded completely different. I like A Drum Is A Woman too.
It was a whole lot of work leading my own group and it was a whole lot of headaches too. That was my main reason to give it up because it was too much. Duke has people to worry for him, but if you have your own band you have to rush, get the tickets, get the money, go to the union and pay the tax. Then you have seven pieces and you’re supposed to start at nine o’clock and it’s five minutes to nine and there’s only five there, so you start worryin’— where’s the ther two? And here they come, two minutes to go, and then you got to worry about where you’re goin’ to work the next week—so it was too much for me. Once you get set like Duke is, you don’t have to worry, ’cause you pay someone to worry for you. But my small group recorded for Mercury and had quite a bit of success with several records. It was a lucky break. Castle Rock that was the first date and it did pretty good.
I was surprised with Japan, everybody was so nice over there, and they went for jazz so much. The Japanese musicians, they’re on the ball too. India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Beirut, all those places like that, see, they were good too. We only had to work three days a week and we had a chance to do a little socializin’ the rest of the week.
We had a chance to see the country and you know, it wasn’t hard at all. Duke Ellington was impressed with the Indian music. He wrote a suite about it, the ‘Far East Suite’. Very little escapes him. He gets his ideas from everything he sees and hears.
I was surprised with Japan, everybody was so nice over there, and they went for jazz so much. The Japanese musicians, they’re on the ball too. India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Beirut, all those places like that, see, they were good too. We only had to work three days a week and we had a chance to do a little socializin’ the rest of the week.
We had a chance to see the country and you know, it wasn’t hard at all. Duke Ellington was impressed with the Indian music. He wrote a suite about it, the ‘Far East Suite’. Very little escapes him. He gets his ideas from everything he sees and hears.
I used to like picking music for my band, with Lawrence Brown, Emmett Berry, Harold Francis, Arthur Clark, Allan Walker, and Barney Richmond. I had formed the group in 1951 and kept them until ’55. Then I went to a T.V. show with Ted Steele, Cozy Cole and Jonah Jones. We only played from three ’til five, five days a week. That was nice. I used to come on at four and I got so that I used to pick out the numbers to play. I wanted to play one fast number and one slow number so it got to the point where I got some real elderly fans, these sewing circle people, you know. These women that was at home doing the sewin’, and washin’ and things like that, and these people that had club meetings. So, at four o’clock every day, I had to play some kind of a slow pretty number for these people in New Jersey.
I once listed in an article my favourite Duke Ellington records, they were Braggin’ In Brass; All Too Soon; Flamingo; Jack The Bear and Rocks In My Bed. But I’d probably add to it now. I like some of these things that Duke made with ’Ellington ’65’, ‘Ellington ’63’ and I like the ‘Marv Poppins' album very much too, I was surprised with that. We made A Little Spoonful Of Sugar that I had to play. When we made this thing, we didn’t know what we were doin’, just figurin’ we’d run two minutes of this and two minutes of that, and when it was released it sounded completely different. I like A Drum Is A Woman too.
It was a whole lot of work leading my own group and it was a whole lot of headaches too. That was my main reason to give it up because it was too much. Duke has people to worry for him, but if you have your own band you have to rush, get the tickets, get the money, go to the union and pay the tax. Then you have seven pieces and you’re supposed to start at nine o’clock and it’s five minutes to nine and there’s only five there, so you start worryin’— where’s the ther two? And here they come, two minutes to go, and then you got to worry about where you’re goin’ to work the next week—so it was too much for me. Once you get set like Duke is, you don’t have to worry, ’cause you pay someone to worry for you. But my small group recorded for Mercury and had quite a bit of success with several records. It was a lucky break. Castle Rock that was the first date and it did pretty good.
I was surprised with Japan, everybody was so nice over there, and they went for jazz so much. The Japanese musicians, they’re on the ball too. India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Beirut, all those places like that, see, they were good too. We only had to work three days a week and we had a chance to do a little socializin’ the rest of the week.
We had a chance to see the country and you know, it wasn’t hard at all. Duke Ellington was impressed with the Indian music. He wrote a suite about it, the ‘Far East Suite’. Very little escapes him. He gets his ideas from everything he sees and hears.
Double Play: Carney to Hodges to Ellington by Don DeMichael It's
hard to keep track of some jazzmen. one week they're with so-and-so's
band, the next week with a different group. It seems they change jobs as
easily as they change clothes-and sometimes as often. But when a man
joins the Ellington band, he usually stays.
Take
the two senior members of the band. Harry Carney has been with the band
since he was 17, and that was 36 years ago. Johnny Hodges, except from
1951-'55, has been an Ellingtonian since 1928. So strong has been the
association of men and band that Hodges' flowing, sensuous alto and
Carney's full-blooded baritone are as much a part of the "Ellington
sound" as are plunger-muted brass and Duke's piano. But
the Hodges-Carney relationship extends beyond their careers in the
Ellington band. Both are from the Boston area, and though Hodges is four
years older than Carney, they were boyhood chums.
"Johnny
and I lived a few doors apart," Carney said recently. "We used to get
together and listen to records. And, of course, I've always been a great
admirer of Johnny. I was trying to play alto in the same vein, and I
stuck as close to him as he would allow me. It did me an awful lot of
good."
Carney,
a large man, sat quietly on the edge of a hotel-room bed. Hodges, a
small man, sprawled on the bed, watching the flickering picture of a
silent television set. He chuckled occasionally. It was difficult to
tell if he was amused by the TV show or by Carney's reminiscences of
far-away days.
Carney
continued: "Hodges was in New York before I came there. He was
instrumental in getting me my first job in New York. That was in 1927.
"He
was with Chick Webb at the Savoy Ballroom. They were having what they
called a Masquerade Ball Night, an all-day, all-night affair. Instead of
the regular two bands playing, there were four bands. Johnny got me a
job in one of the relief bands. In the band was a fellow, Henry Saytoe,
who had a job coming up in a couple of weeks at the bamboo Inn, and
Chinese-American restaurant. I got permission from my folks to stay, and
I took that job. I was 17." Hodges chuckled again.
While
Carney was at the Bamboo Inn, Ellington often came in on his nights off
to dine and listen to the band. After Carney had been at the restaurant
for about three months, the place burned down. But he evidently had made an impression on Ellington. "One
day I bumped into Duke on the street," Carney said. "He inquired as to
what I was doing. I told him I was jobbing around, gigging. That's when
he made me the offer to join him. He was taking a band up to New
England, which was my stomping ground. I'd been away from home long
enough to be homesick, and it didn't take much for him to influence me
to go back." Still and altoist, Carney added baritone saxophone to his doubles during his first week with the band. "There
were quite a few good baritone players in those days," he said. "Sonny
Adams. Willie Grant. Joe Garland. Foots Thomas with the Missourians. As a
matter of fact, all the bands used baritone if the band was above a
certain number of pieces. The average nine- or 10-piece band would have
baritone or someone who doubled baritone. I continued with alto, though,
to about '32 or maybe later than that." Hodges, who speaks much the same way he plays, stirred when asked how he joined the band. "I'd
been with Chick Webb," he said, "You see, Duke started Chick, gave
Chick his first band. Duke was working at the Kentucky Club, six pieces.
Another club opened up on 50th Street and Seventh Ave. I don't remember
the name of it. But I wanted a band just like Duke's. So he asked me to
have a band, and I didn't want any part of having a band. He asked
Chick. (Chick would stand on a corner and sing whole arrangements.) We
got together with six pieces and tried to make it sound like Duke. We
did pretty good until we had had a fire. During that time fire was
common in clubs. We went up to the Savoy for two weeks. Stayed about six
months. "I
left and started gigging with a fellow named Luckey Roberts. The bread
was good. Thought it would last forever. So I kept gigging and gigging
and gigging.
"Meanwhile,
Otto Hardwicke [who was playing alto with Ellington] had an accident,
went through the windshield of a taxicab. Had his face all cut up, and I
had to go to work for him. Duke offered me a job. I still wouldn't take
the job, kept putting it off and putting it off. Everybody was trying
to talk me into taking it. So I finally took it. And here I am." Hodges
would have it that nothing much happened between then and now. He fails
to mention that in those years he became one of the important alto
saxophonists, that his manner of playing influenced countless musicians.
He will mention in an off-hand manner the small band he led from
1951-'55 ("a little experience of my own, a few knocks, a few
headaches").
But
Hodges comments freely when the topic of discussion turns to Sidney
Bechet (pronounced "Bash-shay" by those who knew the late soprano
saxophonist well).
"I
went to hear him at a theater in Boston," Hodges said. "My sister knew
him very well. Made myself known, had a little soprano under my arm. He
asked me to play. I caught the show two, three times to catch as much as
I could. I then I started buying records. Him and Louis Armstrong. The
Clarence Williams Blue Five.
"The
best thing that ever happened to me was when I went to New York and was
playing at a little cabaret on 135th St. He came after me. He had a
club of his own called Club Bechet on 145th St. He came after me and
offered me a job. He would tell me to learn this and learn that. 'The
old man won't be here long,' he'd say. I didn't know what he was talking
about then, but he would go away and get lost, and I was supposed to
play his part. At the same time, I was learning, getting an education. "They
used to have midnight shows at the Lafayette Theater every Friday. All
the clubs used to put on their shows free. Fantastic. We put on our
show, and that's how I got to be known, through him. We played "I Found A
New Baby" in duet form. So I was a big guy from then on, playing a duet
with Bechet. "That
was way before Carney. I was 17. I used to come to New York and stay a
week and run back. I'd take a job in a dancing school that would pay
about $40 a week and only draw $8 or $10, just enough to go home. Day
before payday, I'd go home, and we'd sit down and compare notes. Me, him
[Carney], and Charlie Holmes [a saxophonist prominent in the late '20s
and '30s, especially during his stay with the Luis Russell Band when it
was fronted by Louis Armstrong]. Go back next week and do the same
thing."
Carney, too, came under Bechet's influence.
"It
was through Johnny that I became Bechet-conscious," he said. "That was
before I left Boston. After I got with Duke, I heard so many fabulous
stories about Bechet. Finally I met him and found he was a wonderful
guy, very humorous, dry."
But
it was Hodges who absorbed Bechet into his playing. For example,
Hodges' alto solo on his small-band recording of "Dream Blues," made in
1939 and reissued last years on an Epic LP, if played at 45 rpm instead
of 33-1/33 sounds like Bechet's soprano. "I had quite a few of his riffs," Hodges said, smiling. "Quite a few of his pets. My pets too. Used to nurse him." Hodges turned to Carney, the conversation about Ellington small-unit recordings seemingly having reminded him of something.
"You
know those test records they used to give us?" he asked Carney. "I got
all those. 'Jeep's Blues.' You remember when you, me, and Cootie were
getting it together?" Carney nodded.
"I
got all those," Hodges said. "They'd do four or five takes and keep one
or two. And one or two of what they didn't use would be better than
what they put out."
The
mention of trumpeter Cootie Williams, who was a mainstay of the
Ellington band from 1929 to 1940 when he left to go with Benny Goodman,
brought to mind the Ellington band of the late '30 and early '40s,
considered by many to be the golden era of the band.
But Carney would have none of this the-1940-band-was-the-best-band.
"A
lot of people come up and start talking about the 1940 band and say,
'Gee, that was the band.' For the most part, they've stopped going where
the band's playing. Then they come out one night and say, 'Oh, this
band is nothing like the band of 1940.' And they actually haven't heard
enough or absorbed enough of the current band's playing to say that. In
1940 there was something that did something to them, and that's all they
remember."
Carney's
point was well taken. Ellington, through both his music and the band,
has evolved. For example, the band's library has several arrangements of
Ellington tunes that have become standard.
"Take
'It Don't Mean A Thing,'" Hodges said. "I used to play the verse. You
never heard the verse, didcha? That's the original. Then Ivie Anderson
came in, and there was another arrangement. Then they had one for Ben
Webster. And one for the brass section. Had one for Ray Nance. Then
another one for Ray Nance, a different one."
"Rosemary Clooney did one," Carney added.
"We got all those," Hodges said. "We got a million of 'em. And they're all in the book."
"The book is jammed," Carney said. "We just carry them all over the country.""And don't even mention the arrangements for 'Caravan,'" Hodges sputtered.
Nor is the library numbered, which, to say the least, makes finding a seldom-played arrangement difficult. "He's
very unpredictable," Carney said, referring to Ellington. "If someone
comes up and asks for something, he'll have everyone digging through the
book looking for it. Sometimes we find it, sometimes we don't."
In
addition to carrying a large library filled with yesterday, the band
carries a spirit and tradition that began the day before yesterday.
Spirit and tradition are strong.
One
of these traditions, an Ellington sound, is the plunger-growl trumpet, a
tradition that started with Bubber Miley, was inherited by Cootie
Williams, and continues, to a great extent, in the playing of Ray Nance.
"If
Duke finds an individual who can do it," Carney commented, "he gives
him the work to do. It must be gratifying to a player to know he plays
enough to satisfy the Duke in this particular style.
"I can say the same thing about Russell Procope playing clarinet. When he plays clarinet, he plays Barney so well."
Commenting
on the spirit of the band, Carney said, "There're a lot of nights when
everybody can't feel well all the time. But if the band gets something
going, the spirit just comes up." The
tradition of the band members adding to, making suggestions about,
arrangements is well known. It also is indicative of the band's spirit. "For
instance," Carney began, "when you got into a recording studio, you
might have an arrangement all made, yet it'll probably be changed. Guys
come up with ideas of injecting something. That still goes on." "Everybody pitches in-all the time," Hodges interjected. "Somebody might have ideas to make it a little better." Spirit.
Tradition. Both are contagious. Both are magnets, drawing new blood
into the band but blood that is Ellington blood. For the band has always
been made up of musicians best described as "Ellington people." When
they leave the band, if they ever do, that special sheen of Ellington
usually remains. It is made up, in part, of suavity, urbanity,
self-confidence. It is something no other band imparts to its members.
It is a unique attractive-force.
Perhaps Carney said it best: "You still hear musicians say the height of their ambition is to play in the Ellington band."
THE MUSIC OF JOHNNY HODGES: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH JOHNNY HODGES:
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Johnny Hodges 
