There have long been two extreme schools of thought about trumpeter Bunk Johnson. His most partisan fans thought of him not only as a genius, but the last important living link to the beginnings of what they considered “real jazz.” To them, he not only performed with Buddy Bolden and was part of jazz’s founding, but was one of the few artists in the mid-1940s to play New Orleans jazz as it originally sounded, prior to its “corruption” from swing and the emerging bebop music.
To his detractors, Bunk Johnson was a fraud, a braggart who could barely play his horn in tune, and a drunk who told tall tales that had little connection to reality.
Both sides were wrong and the truth is somewhere in between.
One problem was Bunk Johnson’s birthdate. He claimed to have been born Dec. 27, 1879, which meant that he was old enough to perform with Bolden in 1895. While he did look like he was in his sixties when he made his comeback, it is now believed that he was probably born on Dec. 27, 1889, which would make him just 16 when Bolden stopped playing; Bunk apparently always looked old for his age due to his hard life.
In addition to saying that he worked with Bolden during 1895-98 and Jelly Roll Morton at several jobs in 1900, Johnson also claimed to have been o
