Bunk Johnson

In the mid-1940s Bunk Johnson emerged as a polarizing presence in jazz circles, with admirers praising his refined approach to the horn while critics dismissed his work as inconsequential; his improbable return to performing fueled the debate, though the reality lay between those extremes. Prone to embellishment, Johnson asserted a birth year of 1879 and asserted collaborations with Buddy Bolden in New Orleans, yet records later showed he was born a full decade afterward. Possessing an attractive tone, he never shaped Louis Armstrong’s style as he sometimes suggested, but from roughly 1910 onward he stood among the leading New Orleans trumpeters after joining the Eagle Band. He remained active across the South through the early 1930s without entering a studio. Rediscovered toward the end of that decade by Bill Russell and Fred Ramsey, he received attention in the 1939 volume Jazzmen, after which supporters raised funds to supply him with fresh dental work and an instrument. Private sessions followed in New Orleans during 1942, and in 1943 he reached San Francisco to perform with the wartime lineup of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. Alcoholism made his performances inconsistent, and an attempt by Sidney Bechet to include him in a 1945 ensemble ended when Johnson’s drinking led to his departure. The following year he directed a combo whose core personnel later formed the celebrated group led by George Lewis, yet Johnson found the raw New Orleans style unappealing. He felt more at ease in 1947 fronting a band of accomplished swing musicians; that association produced his final recording, Columbia’s The Last Testament of a Great Jazzman, widely regarded as among his strongest efforts. In 1948 the trumpeter—chronologically only fifty-nine yet appearing considerably older—returned to Louisiana and stepped away from music. Numerous superior sessions have since appeared on compact disc through Good Time Jazz and American Music.