Howard Johnson, veteran jazz musician, tuba innovator and founding member of the Saturday Night time Stay band, died at dwelling in New York on Jan. 11, 2021, following an extended sickness, in response to his longtime accomplice, Nancy Olewine.
An completed participant, composer, arranger and raconteur, Howard gigged on tuba, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, flugelhorn, electrical bass and pennywhistle. For greater than 50 years he was an vital fixture in a number of scenes, shifting fluidly amongst genres. Along with working with a litany of NEA jazz masters together with Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Evans, Charlie Haden, Carla Bley, Jack DeJohnette, and Randy Weston, Johnson additionally performed with pop and rock icons similar to John Lennon, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Taj Mahal, Levon Helm and scores of others.
Johnson performed an vital function in forming and shaping the sound of the Saturday Night time Stay band through the present’s first 5 years: 1975 to 1980. Donning an Egyptian headdress or nurses’ uniform in a number of the most beloved early sketches that includes Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin, his weekly SNL appearances lent Howard visibility uncommon for a jazz musician or in-demand sideman. He appeared in Martin Scorsese’s 1978 documentary The Final Waltz, was featured in a Miller Lite beer business in 1984, and made a Sesame Avenue look with James Taylor (within the many years since, it wasn’t unusual for excited children to level at Howard and shout “Jelly Man Kelly!”).
However Howard initially turned down the SNL gig, telling musical director Howard Shore that having a too-steady job results in complacency, leading to unhealthy music. Musicians in that scenario “begin defending their turf, they begin feeling like they’ve one thing to lose, they usually maintain narrowing and narrowing their perspective. I don’t need to get caught up in stuff like that.” In a number of interviews, Johnson recalled Shore’s reply: “Effectively, for those who really feel that manner about it, then you definately’re the person for the job. Get me a bunch of different troublemakers such as you and we’ll have a fantastic band.”
Complacency was by no means a risk for Johnson. In actual fact, from his earliest years in New York, the breadth of his capabilities led some critics and audiences to consider there should be multiple Howard Johnson: It was simply too laborious to think about that in an usually extremely compartmentalized music scene that the identical man may very well be showing with the avant-gardist Archie Shepp, hard-swinging drummer Buddy Wealthy, and sitting in with bluesman B.B. King.
In actual fact, Johnson crossed paths with legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix at a B.B. King gig, as detailed in an April 12, 2017 weblog submit (hojotuba.com/blog). He and fellow tubist Bob Stewart took their devices as much as Ungano’s [an Upper West Side club] to jam with B.B. King. Simply the presence of that a lot low brass was sufficient to trigger a stir, and proper earlier than they went on, Jimi Hendrix arrived with a bunch of girls. The viewers was distracted, buzzing and cracking jokes, not realizing what to anticipate from a few tuba gamers.
Howard and Bob took to the stage, one on both aspect of B.B., and confirmed everybody they know their manner across the blues. Although there have been no mikes, they made themselves heard, with energy to spare. Afterward, Jimi sought out Howard to congratulate him, saying, “You brothers simply did the god-damnedest shit I ever heard! Ain’t no one laughin’ now!”
Johnson appeared on a whole lot of recordings spanning Gato Barbieri, McCoy Tyner, Muddy Waters, Roswell Rudd, Phoebe Snow, David Sanborn and Freddie Hubbard. He backed vocalists as various as Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Ella Fitzgerald, Yoko Ono and Albert King. Johnson could be heard on many film soundtracks, particularly these of Spike Lee; he spent a number of years with the NDR Large Band in Hamburg; and launched 4 albums as a pacesetter, together with three along with his multi-tuba brass choir Gravity.
Whereas he performed an arsenal of devices, there was little question the tuba was his best love. “A tuba could be thunderous, it may be a rough-and-tumble instrument. Individuals don’t consider it as something delicate. I by no means thought there was something the tuba couldn’t do, and I’ve been fairly happy with what I can do with a tuba,” Johnson mused in a 2019 interview for Scorching Home jazz journal.
By 2006, when New York Instances critic Nate Chinen declared Howard Johnson “the determine most answerable for the tuba’s present standing as a full-fledged jazz voice,” the life’s work of the multi- instrumentalist had been in progress for greater than 4 many years. Johnson burned with the fireplace of bass-clef innovation since nicely earlier than 1963, when he took an offhand comment from Eric Dolphy as a name to motion to maneuver to New York.
As a teen, Howard had found that he might push the tuba’s vary to beforehand unheard heights—greater than six octaves—surpassing the trombone on the excessive finish and edging into trumpet territory. In a 2000 interview, Johnson famous that he was motivated to excel by a pecking order amongst highschool band members, with those that took non-public classes outranking those that realized in school, and the self-taught—like Howard—on the backside. When one of many non-public college students requested him how excessive the tuba might go, “I used to be very embarrassed that I didn’t know,” he recalled. He started to experiment, noticing a number of the highest notes had been “very fairly; they seemed like they’d form of a French horn high quality. So I added that new octave to my warm-ups.” He was stunned to find that none of his bandmates might play wherever close to that prime. “At that time, I’d in all probability been taking part in about six or eight weeks. I used to be extremely motivated. I didn’t need to appear to be a idiot,” Johnson stated. “It was at that time that I made a decision to not let anyone inform me what the restrictions had been of the tuba or of the music.”
He was by no means a novelty act who would sometimes blast notes into the stratosphere to excite an viewers. Fairly, he performed melody traces and solos fluidly and fluently, sustaining tonal integrity and feeling. Although there was no current repertoire within the early Nineteen Sixties for his then-groundbreaking low-brass vary, as soon as within the Large Apple Johnson caught the ear—and piqued the creativeness—of Charles Mingus.
The enduring bassist/composer wrote adventurous elements for him in such a excessive register that “even trombonists wouldn’t welcome seeing these notes on the web page,” Johnson recalled in 2017, for the liner notes of Testimony, his final launch fronting his multi-tuba band Gravity.
Johnson grew to become the muse of different composers, together with Carla Bley and Gil Evans, establishing relationships lasting many years. Howard nearly had a second encounter with Hendrix, in a undertaking with the good Gil Evans, who had made plans to document with Hendrix and advised Howard Johnson he needed him within the studio, too. Sadly, Jimi didn’t dwell lengthy sufficient to make the gig. However Howard finally bought to have his say on considered one of Jimi’s best tunes, “Voodoo Chile,” on Gil Evans’ recordings, and was additionally identified to play a beautiful, tender model of “Little Wing” on pennywhistle.
Each post-Johnson tuba participant has been challenged by the usual he set. He believed the tuba is able to a nearly limitless sonic and emotional vary, primarily based on a participant’s skills. By demonstrating his expertise, Howard single-handedly moved the instrument out of its conventional place within the rhythm sections of enormous ensembles into featured roles in small bands. Recognizing his impression on the tuba’s altering function in music, in 2008 the instrument-maker Meinl Weston launched the HoJo Gravity Collection tuba, designed to the participant’s specs.
He influenced musicians by increasing their concepts of the chances of the instrument, and demonstrated huge generosity of spirit, mentoring tuba gamers, previous, current and future. He influenced jazz (and pop) composers and arrangers by bringing a heretofore ignored instrument to the entrance line of soloists, and adjusted jazz total by altering the path of how jazz used the bass clef—no extra oom-pah-pah, however pure linear bop, swing and rock phrasing that might stand by itself towards another “typical” jazz solo instrument.
At a time when jazz-rock fusion was gaining traction, Johnson opened up the music with out diluting the custom, performing with an unwavering jazz sensibility as a founding member of the Saturday Night time Stay band. His writing, arranging and taking part in captured the eye and creativeness of such popular culture icons as John Lennon, Paul Simon, Levon Helm and Taj Mahal; Johnson by no means dumbed it down, by no means resorted to spoon-feeding anybody “Jazz 101” stage music. He has all the time been “The Actual Factor,” as Taj Mahal dubbed the 1971 CD that debuted Johnson’s modern multi-tuba brass choir, Gravity.
At the same time as he approached his seventy fifth birthday, Johnson declared that he nonetheless had the fireplace in his stomach to solo, to extend consciousness of the flexibility of often-underutilized horns, and to proceed to have his say on the definitive strategy to play them. After the music grasp now not made a observe of hoisting the 20-plus pound instrument to his lips—his final gigs had been in 2017—he continued to really feel he had a lot to supply as a mentor and advisor.
There’s a beautiful accessibility to Howard Johnson’s artistry. Whether or not taking part in a typical from a Broadway present, taking the lead on Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” with the Gil Evans Orchestra, or evoking early R&B beats on Don Pullen’s “Large Alice” with Gravity, his music might get underneath your pores and skin and quicken your steps for days to come back.
Howard’s expertise, dedication, and no-limits viewpoint had been irreplaceable substances in his recipe for creative success {and professional} success, and his music will proceed to encourage for years to come back.
Howard is survived by his longtime life accomplice, Nancy Olewine; his daughter, musician Nedra Johnson; and two sisters, Teri Nichols and Connie Armstrong. He was predeceased by his son, David Johnson, a musician and artist, in 2011.
