"Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at jazz."

For a while, the trombone was considered a relic from the early days of jazz; it was difficult to maneuver, and many maintained that it could not compete with the speed and clarity of a saxophone. J.J. Johnson changed all of that.

Johnson started out on the piano as a child. He switched to the trombone when he was fourteen, partly because he found it challenging, but mostly because his band needed a trombone player. "I never had any formal training on the instrument, other than in High School and spending Sunday afternoons, after church, with a tutor, who happened to play lead trombone with the local YMCA Band (mostly marches). He was a marvelous player with a BIG sound. Therefore, early on, I became very preoccupied with SOUND, more so than with technique."

After just four years with the trombone, Johnson joined Snookum Russell's band; jobs with Benny Carter and Count Basie's band soon followed. Success came when he started playing bebop in combos with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Illinois Jacquet. During the war he played for troops in Korea and Japan.

When Johnson returned to the United States in 1952, things were rough for musicians. He put away his trombone, and worked a 9-5 job as a blueprint inspector. It was not until 1954 that he was able to play full time again, when he joined up with fellow trombonist Kai Winding to form a sextet billed as "Jay and Kai".

Bebop made it easy for a musician to get lost in showing off their technical skills. Johnson worked hard to focus on making a sound that was uniquely his, as his hero Lester Young did. "I have been, always was, and still am consumed and preoccupied with the business of playing the instrument with clarity and with logic and with some kind of expressiveness, if you will. So that if my trombone playing has a persona--I hope that it does--it is based on that desire to project on the instrument an improvisation with logic and with clarity, leaving no question in your mind as to, 'What was he trying to do?'"

In 1970, Johnson again needed a change of scene. He went off to Hollywood, and spent the next 17 years scoring films and television shows. To keep his trombone skills up, he played part time as a third trombone in the band for the Carol Burnett Show. He loved doing the film scores, but found it difficult to get jobs for anything other than blaxploitation films. "The film community is a whole 'nother world. And I can say without reservation that early on I also found out that, man, you're in a very racist element here. There are no black film composers doing the likes of Star Wars, doing the likes of E.T., doing the likes of Jurassic Park. There are none, nor will there ever be one ... All they know is, 'J.J. Johnson is a jazz musician, so therefore he will write jazz for my movie, and this movie ain't about jazz.' So not only are they racist, they have severe cases of tunnelvision."

Johnson finally made his return to jazz in 1987, recording and touring for the next ten years. He took his own life in 2001, after a long battle with prostate cancer.