Biography
Johnny Carisi's most enduring legacy rests on his authorship of "Israel," the intricate blues Miles Davis captured with his Birth Of The Cool nonet. Beyond that achievement his professional path remained largely hidden from view. Although he acquired most of his trumpet technique through self-instruction, Carisi performed in the early years with little-known ensembles before serving a 1943 engagement in Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band. By the mid-1940s his compositional skills had reached a level of refinement that allowed him to supply charts to the libraries of Ray McKinley, Charlie Barnet, and Claude Thornhill. Never regarded as a significant improviser, he nevertheless appeared occasionally on trumpet with Claude Thornhill's Orchestra between 1949 and 1950. Despite maintaining steady employment as an arranger, Johnny Carisi issued only a handful of recordings under his own leadership. One such project gave him the chance to revisit "Israel" in 1956 for a Bluebird session that stayed unreleased until the compact-disc era; the same date featured a "Guitar Choir" in an unconventional treatment of the Showboat score, on which he played trumpet on "Nobody Else But Me." In 1961 he split an Impulse album, Into The Hot, with Cecil Taylor, and four years later he supplied the charts for trumpeter Marvin Stamm's Machinations. For the balance of his career Johnny Carisi concentrated on studio assignments, maintained a part-time interest in classical composition, and worked as a music educator.