Pete Johnson

Pete Johnson ranked among the three leading boogie-woogie pianists, sharing that distinction with Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, whose rapid rise in the closing years of the 1930s propelled the idiom to widespread popularity. A onetime drummer, he turned to piano in 1922. During the 1920s and 1930s he immersed himself in the Kansas City milieu, frequently supporting vocalist Big Joe Turner. John Hammond located him in 1936 and arranged an engagement at New York’s Famous Door. Following his contribution to Hammond’s Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938, Johnson began a steady schedule of recordings and joined Ammons and Lewis from time to time under the name Boogie Woogie Trio. He also supplied piano for several of Turner’s landmark sessions. Throughout the 1940s he remained active in the studio and resided chiefly in Los Angeles from 1947 through 1949. Relocating to Buffalo in 1950, he stayed largely out of view for the rest of the decade aside from a single 1958 appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival. A stroke sustained late that year left him partially disabled. His last public performance came at Hammond’s Spirituals to Swing event in January 1967, where he supplied the right-hand part on “Roll ’Em Pete,” two months prior to his death.