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The notes for this Cd reflect enormous care and fully cover the sourcing issues for the recordings chosen for inclusion. The enormous range of styles Johnson displays mastery of us is impressive enough for any pianist. Just great, great notes, with a running discussion covering each selection on the lower half of the booklet, and more general articles above on the genesis of the Folways recordings and Johnson's career. It's not hard to imagine Johnson back in the Twenties at some Harlem rent party, playing long into the night while the gifted musicians hanging around settle down into a state of pure contented listening bliss. (And speaking of streching, on many of these numbers we can hear his supernatural ease at spanning vast keyboard spaces - surely Johnson had some of the largest hands of his generation of pianists). This selection of the immortal James P. Johnson's playing was recorded during the first half of the forties for Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records. Two W.C.
Johnson's own compositions make the majority of choices.Asch gallantly left Johnson to record pretty much whatever he wished, and we hear on this Cd examples taken from a wealth of material Johnson left, with the composer playing versions of twelve of his pieces, including piano versions of otherwise unrecorded larger concert works, "Yamekraw", the slow movement to his "Jazzamine Concerto", and a reduced "Jungle Drums". Add to this the constant imagainative touches Johnson brings to his music-making, how he enlivens everything he plays with an inexhaustible spontaniety and joy and you have someone you just can't hear often enough. It deserves to be much better known.One of the marks of a great pianist for me is whether I can listen for any length of time without growing tired. Johnson passes my simple litmus test for pianists going away with flying colors. Handy selections are included, "St. James P. Johnson runs through a host of numbers streching across a broad historical time frame.
An enormous amount of time was spent on this issue of one of America's finest musical artists. Gershwin's big 1929 hit from "Show Girl", "Liza", proves a knockout, a fabulous performance, fittingly the opening recording on this Cd - a thrilling freedom floats the music effortlessly along. The music dates from the dawn of Ragtime back in the days of the 1893 Columbia Exposition and Jesse Pickett's "The Dream", to Scott Joplin's "Euphonic Blues", handled with great assurance, a model of how to 'swing' a rag's synocopation without altering the music's own intrinsic beat. Louis Blues" and a 1922 work, "Aunt Hagar's Blues", where Johnson gives effortless examples of a fulsome variety of pianistic demands.
Funky, romantic and loveable. The extended work Yamekraw is not a great piece of music - too episodic to be - but it too is so moving. Waller is a more note-perfect pianist, with a unique drive, Willie the Lion has his amazing impressionism, but Johnson is the master.
And beautifully presented, annotated, remastered.everything. Such a great composition, and so movingly (not perfectly) played. Beautiful.
The CD will explain why Johnson was considered the Dean. As is the whole CD. By the way, I' d also like to hear the Asch Carolina Balmoral, but as far as I know, it remains unissued (the Blue Note one is awesome).
Jazzamine Concerto (which reappears, in part, at the end of the CD as Blues For Jimmy) is as deep as Stride gets.
Maybe I'm just in the first flush of enthusiasm about this guys stuff, but this makes me want a time machine. Johnson's playing is pure magic, as Duke Ellington says, and if you play piano yourself, you must hear his left hand. Never too much or too little, always supportive of the top line and always just right. I found out about James P. I'da like to ah bin there. Wow. Johnnson just recently and I'm a senior. This album has better sound than some others and a real long serious number which was later orchestrated.
As such, he influenced Ellington, Basie and Thelonious Monk amongst others.He recorded extensively, but for a long time little of his material was available on CD. They compare favourably with the grossly over-rated Gershwin). Johnson is one of the most influential and neglected figues in 20th century American music.
His ability as a stride virtuoso is demonstrated in "Liza" and "Twilight Rag", his ragtime roots in Scott Joplin's "Euphonic Sounds", and his empathy for the blues in a number of tracks, the best being "Snowy Morning Blues", given two markedly different performances and the poignant "Blue Moods Sex".His neglected serious compositions are demonstrated with "Yamecraw", "Jungle Drums" and "Jazzamine Concerto", all well worth hearing in the only recording opportunity Johnson ever received to air them. All in all, this is a splendid disc that does justice to Johnson's multi-faceted genius. (They have since been rediscovered and recorded by the Concordia Orchestra, and are well worth hearing.
James P. This CD, however, encapsulates most of Johnson's genius in one disc.The recordings, made for Asch, cover most facets of Johnson's career. While it is a little short of full-blooded stride piano (why was Asch's version of "Carolina Balmoral" not included)., no one with more than a passing interestin jazz piano should be without it.
Best known as the teacher of Fats Waller, he was the composer of "Charleston", THE song that exemplified the 1920s, a writer of serious orchestral works, a magnificent accompanist of Bessie Smith and others, and the leading figure in the Harlem stride piano style. Classics has now completed a reasonably comprehensive eight volume reissue, which is a must for Johnson fans.
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