Before Louis Armstrong left Chicago to join Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra in 1924, Johnny Dunn (February 19, 1897 – August 20, 1937) was considered the king of New York’s Jazz trumpet players. Dunn was discovered in Memphis by W.C. Handy in 1916 and worked for him until he left in 1920 to take over Blues singer Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds. When Dunn left Mamie’s band he was replaced by Bubber Miley. Dunn then formed his own band called the Original Jazz Hounds that featured singer Edith Wilson (who later became famous as Aunt Jemima in Quaker Oats commercials), whom he had met while playing in the Plantation Revue on Broadway.The show was a great success and even played in London. Upon returning to America she left the revue and joined Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra. Dunn was always heavily involved in the show biz side music and played in other musical reviews built around singer Florence Mills. The revues that he worked in seemed to always end up in London and he recorded some sides there in 1927 with The Plantation Orchestra.
Dunn liked it in Europe and spent most of his later life there. He played in the Southern Syncopated Orchestra along with Sidney Bechet and with Dave Peyton, and Noble Sissle Orchestra’s while overseas. He also found work playing trumpet in several other shows that revolved around Edith Wilson, Florence Mills or Josephine Baker.
In 1928 he was back in New York where he led some memorable sessions with giants of 1920s Jazz piano, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton, but returned to Europe with the Noble Sissle Orchestra and then moved to the Netherlands and then Denmark for several years. Dunn died of tuberculosis in Paris in 1937.
| Johnny Dunn and his Band | Johnny Dunn and his Original Jazz Band |
| Johnny Dunn and his Jazz Band | Johnny Dunn’s Original Jazz Hounds |
| Edith Wilson and Johnny Dunn’s Original Jazz Hounds | |
| Title | Recording Date | Recording Location | Company |
| Dunn’s Cornet Blues (Johnny Dunn) | 4-11-1924 | New York, New York | Columbia 124-D |
| You’ve Never Heard The Blues (Johnny Dunn) | 4-11-1924 | New York, New York | Columbia 124-D |
| Artist | Instrument |
| Sam Speed | Banjo |
| Leroy Tibbs | Piano, Cymbal |
Redhotjazz.com was a pioneering website during the "Information wants to be Free" era of the 1990s. In that spirit we are recovering the lost data from the now defunct site and sharing it with you.
Most of the music in the archive is in the form of MP3s hosted on Archive.org or the French servers of Jazz-on-line.com where this music is all in the public domain.
Files unavailable from those sources we host ourselves. They were made from original 78 RPM records in the hands of private collectors in the 1990s who contributed to the original redhotjazz.com. They were hosted as .ra files originally and we have converted them into the more modern MP3 format. They are of inferior quality to what is available commercially and are intended for reference purposes only. In some cases a Real Audio (.ra) file from Archive.org will download. Don't be scared! Those files will play in many music programs, but not Windows Media Player.
