R.I.P. Eddie Johnson, Chicago sax great: Artistry on and off the stage

Eddie Johnson being honored in Hyde Park last December (photo: James Walker Jr., jazzchicago.net)

My dear friend Eddie Johnson – a grand saxophonist and a gentleman of the first order – died yesterday, at the age of 89. 

If our friendship were all I had to report, I'd write these paragraphs for myself and stick them in a journal, or maybe send them to a small circle of friends who knew and loved him.  But that friendship is just a personal footnote to the widespread admiration he earned for his musicianship, his creativity, and his wonderful, almost preposterous musical career.  And that’s a story worth telling -- even to those who never heard him.

Actually, E.J. had a large circle of friends – an enormous extended community, comprising not only those who knew him or shared a bandstand with him, but also everyone who heard his hot sweet tenor throughout the years.  He made only two albums under his own name, and the first didn’t come till he was in his 60s; he appeared on precious few others, most famously Kurt Elling’s 1997 album The Messenger.  But his playing glowed with history and experience, and always ennobled those he accompanied.

Eddie Johnson came of age during the Swing Era, and he stitched together his style from the Manichean models of pre-war jazz tenor.   As he explained to me for the liner notes of his first album (Indian Summer, not currently available), his uncle and musical mentor pushed him to mimic the big, brawling sound of Coleman Hawkins.  “But when [my uncle] wasn't around, I'd revert back to Prez,” E.J. said. “Nobody swung like Prez."  (In other words, left to his own devices, he emulated the buoyant rhythms and romantic lyricism of Lester Young, the other tenor innovator of the 1930s.)

E.J.’s style remained an authentic blast from the past, but not a relic; he was one of the last true exemplars of the Swing tenor sound, in which every note carries its own inflection, each phrase a distinct imagery, the whole solo rippling and cresting with the limitless nuance of human speech.  It was old school through and through.  But E.J. played with such energy and verve that it never sounded dated.  Like his perfectly tailored sports coats and the smart ties with which he matched them, he wore his music with a casual elegance that belied its perfection.

Up above, I described his career as “almost preposterous.”  You decide.  His first big break came when Kentucky State College “recruited” his working band of Chicago teenagers, offering them full scholarships to enroll at the school and to base the band there.  The idea was to use the band the way modern colleges use their varsity football programs, as a means of enhancing the school’s reputation and desirability among prospective students.  (Needless to say, this sort of thing doesn't happen very often any more.)

Later on, he had the chance to join Duke Ellington’s band, the sine qua non of jazz orchestras, which he dearly wanted to do.  But newly married, and hoping to start a family, he instead accepted an offer from the popular “jump-band” entertainer Louis Jordan. That gig compensated (in salary) for what it lacked in prestige; instead of Ellington classics like “Satin Doll” or “Diminuendo In Blue,” E.J. appeared on popular but perishable Jordan tunes like “Barnyard Boogie” and “Beans and Cornbread.”

By the late 1950s, E.J. had essentially left the music business.  To support his family, he went into business, and by the late-1970s, he was Chief Systems Engineer for the City of Chicago, running the city’s still-young computer system.  He didn’t have a degree in computer science; he wasn’t writing code or anything like that.  The job required him to be conscientious, to attend to detail, to be reliable, and to make things hum – most of which he’d been doing for years as a musician.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that he left the nine-to-five, took his city pension, and “retired” to music, performing regularly at Andy’s and then, eventually, all over the city, in increasing demand.  Along with Fred Anderson and Von Freeman, he became one of the city’s enduring tenor icons, building a new full-time career when most men consider putting their own to rest.  

Much of his success lay in the fact that his music so accurately captured the man.  E.J. was effortlessly kind, soulful and gracious, and you heard all that on a ballad.  But he had a spark of whimsical mischief that kept things lively, whether on the stand – where it could set a solo blazing – or at the bar, after the set, where it would erupt in infectious laughter over a small-batch bourbon.

(E.J. interrupted his music only for his other passion, golf: throughout the 80s, you knew that spring was near when he disappeared from the Andy’s bandstand for a couple Thursdays to join his friend Joe Williams, the legendary jazz vocalist, for a golf excursion to Florida or California.)

In recent years, he had to give up playing, at first temporarily (after a couple of health scares), and then permanently.  Emphysema was the main culprit.  It saddened him not to play but not as much as a sub-standard performance would have done, he told me.  Rather than play badly, he chose not to play at all.  The kicker, of course, is that even at only partial capacity, he’d still have managed to move listeners to tears.  

With his failing health in mind, the Chicago Jazz Orchestra had planned a “tribute” to E.J. – who had occasionally performed with them as a guest soloist was a regular member of the band's sax section from the early 80s through the late 90s – at their upcoming concert, an April 25 bash at International House at the U of Chicago (1414 E. 59th).  That concert will now become a memorial instead. 

You’d like to think that E.J. could have held on till that concert, but I doubt it offered much incentive.  Unfailingly humble, he grew genuinely embarrassed at accolades; he’d have attended the concert, but squirmed through the praise.  He once told me that he was even embarrassed about the warm reviews he received after he returned to music as a senior citizen, saying that all he’d really done was to outlive his more talented compatriots: Hawkins and Young, and Ben Webster, Paul Gonsalves, and the other titans of Swing tenor.  

I didn’t believe him then, and I don’t believe him now.