Word: johnson
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, Goldman...
...Bunk Johnson, an old man who had spent a lifetime playing his cornet in the rural south in and around New Orleans. He had never recorded, but among the old timers in New Orleans, he was remembered with great respect. The collectors finally located Bunk in New Iberia, Louisiana. He was slight and dark with snow white hair, well into his sixties by then. Did he play anymore? No, haven't touched a horn in ten years. Did he have a horn? Nope. My horn got wrecked the night Evan Thomas was murdered on the bandstand...
Until the discovery of the Bunk Johnson band, most jazz collectors assumed that New Orleans jazz had died when the red-light district was closed in 1917. They assumed that all the jazz musicians were out of work and either went north to Chicago or New York, or gave up music entirely. Many great musicians did go north--King Oliver, Johnny Dodds, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong. The New Orleans music they took with them began its metamorphosis in the 20's and 30's, evolving into swing and big band dance music, and later into bop and progressive jazz...
Slow Drag Pavageau had been the regular bassist with the George Lewis band and with Bunk Johnson before that. He had worked with George for almost 30 years, and had toured all over Europe with him. He had been the grand dad of the group, and now--at 80--he was hospitalized with stomach cancer. Drag was a delightful little man, a creole who spoke little English that was intelligible, and a lot of creole French that no one understood but him. He had grown up--like many New Orleans jazzmen--in a French speaking family, and seemed to personify...
...over Europe, young men looked up wide-eyed after hearing a Bunk Johnson record, or a rare George Lewis concert, and said, "I can't be satisfied with listening to records. I must learn to make music like that myself. Some day I will go to New Orleans with my horn, and I will play with George Lewis, and Kid Thomas, and Percy Humphrey." Young foreigners flocked to this Mecca all through the sixties. Some gave up their careers, or postponed them, to spend years at a time soaking up the music and the culture which created...