James P. Johnson • World Broadcast Recordings

1944 was a rather busy year for pianist James P. Johnson (1894-1955). Johnson, if not the first (although he was the earliest on records), was certainly the definitive stride pianist of the 1920s. A brilliant player who was a major influence on his contemporaries and the generation to follow, Johnson is today often thought primarily as the inspiration for his protégé Fats Waller. However as a pianist and a songwriter (including “The Charleston,” “If I Could Be With You,” and “Old Fashioned Love”), Johnson had few if any peers in his early days. During much of the 1930s, Johnson devoted a lot of his time to writing extended orchestral works that unfortunately were not recorded and are now lost. By 1938 he was performing much more in public again although a stroke kept him out of action during part of 1940-42. He was quite active during the remainder of the 1940s until a major stroke in 1951 forced his retirement. In 1944 James P. Johnson led two all-star septet sessions for Blue Note, and a quintet date for the Asch label, accompanied Katherine Handy on six songs composed by her father W.C. Handy, was on a V-disc session led by Eddie Condon, guested on five of Condon’s Town Hall radio concerts, and recorded with the Will Bradley/Yank Lawson All-Stars, Sidney DeParis’ Blue Note Jazzmen, Max Kaminsky, and clarinetist Rod Cless. He also recorded a solo piano version of