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Sound Signatures
Johnny Smith
Forever Young
Homage To A Forgotten Innovator
By Chip
Stern
You’ve probably heard of the guitar bearing his
name.
But
what of the man’s profound artistry and humanity?
Ladies and gentleman, the Segovia of Jazz Guitar,
Johnny Smith.
In talking
over the phone with Mister Johnny Smith, time and again I’m taken aback by this
legendary guitarist’s self-effacing humor and earnest humility, as he patiently
indulges my queries, and strains to retrace the forgotten footsteps of the jazz
limelight from the quietude of his Colorado Springs home. It’s been 47 years since Johnny experienced
the blessed relief of watching the spires of the New York City skyline recede
through the rear-view mirror of his car, as he and his four year old daughter
began their unsentimental journey west.
Those memories have faded, like autumn leaves in late November, yet here
comes another pilgrim putting this soft-spoken octogenarian through an exercise
in nostalgia.
However,
when I apologize for being such an obsessive nudge, Johnny will hear
nothing of it, and pooh-poohs my concerns with characteristic modesty. “Oh, no, don’t be sorry—I’m flattered that
you have this interest.” But then it’s
Johnny’s turn to apologize. “Listen, I
have a very embarrassing question. Could
you give me the spelling of your name again, please? Chip…right, right. You see,” he explains in his wry, phlegmatic
way, “names go right through me. I’d
forget my own—if it wasn’t John Smith.”
©
Chuck Stewart
The Right Stuff—John Henry Smith
Swinging That There Hammer In The Late 1950s
“The Standard We All Aspire To…”
Truth be
told, John Henry Smith isn’t the only one to have grown forgetful.
But for those who remember,
his stature remains heroic, not unlike that of another post-WWII icon, Chuck Yeager—the first pilot to
break the sound barrier. Smith himself
had a dual passion for flight and music, and only his less than perfect
eyesight precluded his full-time aspirations as a pilot. As a result, while Chuck was pushing the
envelope to Mach Two and beyond, Johnny raised the bar for musicality on the
amplified arch top guitar well into the stratosphere as staff guitarist at NBC
from 1946-1958, on a series of influential combo recordings for the Roost
label, and as a live fixture at Birdland for upwards of twenty-two weeks a
year.
The Right Stuff—Chuck Yeager
Like
Johnny Smith, He Too Broke The Sound Barrier
Johnny Smith’s playing is
emblematic of everything I cherish in jazz guitar. At his peak, Smith’s flawless touch, gorgeous sound,
length and breadth of melodic line, classical articulation and tremendous
rhythmic drive conferred a swooping, airborne quality to his improvisations—and
in terms of sheer technical command, no jazz guitarist this side of Django
Reinhardt (an enormous influence) ever demonstrated such flash, fluency and
finesse with a pick. In many ways his
lush chord voicings and signature harmonic conception 
anticipated the free form
breakthroughs of Bill Evans. And like
fellow jazz giants Hank Jones, Clark Terry, Johnny Hodges and Jo Jones, Johnny
Smith’s purity of tone and depth of nuance were such that one carefully
sculpted note often sufficed for dozens, making it seem as though the
instrument offered no physical impediments whatsoever—an illusion to be sure,
but a grand one at that. Much as Duke
Ellington once observed of Django Reinhardt, it can be said of Johnny Smith that it’s impossible for him to
play a superfluous note or anything that isn’t beautiful and in good taste.
Gypsy Genius, Django Reinhart
An Enduring Source Of Inspiration
Still, for far too many guitarists—yet to be born in
1967 when Johnny recorded a superb pair of combo sessions for the Verve label (Johnny
Smith and Johnny Smith’s Kaleidoscope, with the dream
team of Hank Jones, George Duvivier and Don Lamond)—the name Johnny Smith is
shrouded in obscurity, save for some vague glint of recognition associated with
the Gibson, Heritage and Guild instruments that bear his name. In part the reigning king of jazz guitarists
fostered his own obscurity by abdicating his crown upon the death of his second
wife—withdrawing from the bright lights of Broadway back in 1958 to settle in
Out of sight, out of mind, a
situation exacerbated by the tenuous status of his Roost recordings, which were
in limbo for decades, with the exception of two Blue Note/Roulette single-CD
compilations: one gathers together all of the pre-LP era singles which comprise
his legendary 1952-53 quintet sessions with the likes of Stan Getz (Moonlight
In Vermont); then there are a pair of 1960-61 quartet sessions,
including one gem featuring Smith’s first collaboration with Hank Jones and
George Duvivier, aided and abetted by drummer Ed Shaughnessy (The Sound
Of The Johnny Smith Guitar).
There are also the aforementioned 1967 Verve
sessions, only available as imports (and simply begging for a comprehensive
hybrid SACD/CD release). 
Johnny’s final 1968 Verve
session, Phase II (also featuring Jones and Duvivier, with
drummer Derryl Goes) was an attempt to tap into
the pop market a la the Creed Taylor/Wes Montgomery collaborations, with a more
“contemporary” selection of tunes—it was never released on CD. Finally, there’s a lovely mid-‘70s acoustic
recital that takes up half of the
“Johnny
Smith set the standard for excellence in guitar playing,” asserts the
remarkable Jimmy Bruno, adding that, “Johnny remains the standard we all
aspire to, and there’s no one, even among today’s leading innovators, who
has approached his levels of virtuosity…and musicality.”
Johnny
Smith and Jimmy Bruno
“When I
was a child,” fellow
“As far as
I’m concerned, no one in the world plays the guitar better than he,” the late
Barney Kessel often exulted when that valiantly swinging guitarist conducted
interviews. “They might play it
differently, but nobody plays better. Johnny could easily overplay because he’s
got chops unlimited, but his musical taste would not allow him to make an
overstatement. As a result, he makes
beautiful music.”
“He has such an awesome command of the instrument,”
enthuses Bill Frisell, himself a
© Chip
Stern
“What most
people don’t realize,” jazz master Jack
Wilkins proclaims with profound conviction (and affection), “is that
the modern legato style of chord melody playing—the harmonies, the phrasing,
the voice-leading—all derive from Johnny Smith’s innovations. Now it’s not as if there weren’t exceptional
chord-melody players before Johnny, people like Eddie Lang, Dick McDonough,
Carl Kress and George Van Epps. But in a
sense, Johnny Smith codified everything that came before him, and took it to
another, much higher level. And in
addition to his use of closed chord voicings on the guitar—which are quite easy
on the piano but involve really difficult stretches on the guitar—he also made
inventive use of drop tunings, open strings, thirds, contrary motion,
three-octave arpeggios...you name it.
He’s the man.”
However, were you to query Johnny about all this,
another answer would be forthcoming. “I
never really considered myself a jazz guitarist,” Smith proclaims firmly. “Someone else categorized me. I
was always off on different tangents, and that was my experience over the
years—I loved all kinds of music. I was
able to ad-lib against chord changes a bit, but there’s still a world of
difference between that and being a true jazz player, like the people I
consider true jazz 
masters—where
that was their total concentration. And
it was not my total
concentration. I never really had a jazz
vocabulary on the same level as guys like Jack Wilkins, Barney Kessel, Jim
Hall, Wes Montgomery, Chuck Wayne, Jimmy Raney or Tal Farlow. I just played like I thought the song should
be played. The most important thing,
first off, was establishing a good bass line.
That and the melody were always the two main priorities with me—the
melody and a good bass line. Of course I
was doing the chord thing, which I guess turned out to be the difference—not
that that means anything. To get
those closed voicings I had to really stretch out, and I was able to connect
the chords so that it sounded legato.”
Be that as it may, Johnny could play that guitar
just like ringing a bell, and now, thanks to the archival largesse and profound
artistic commitment of our friends at Mosaic
Records we can bear witness to the Dead Sea Scrolls of Johnny Smith’s
primacy, in the form of The Complete
Roost Johnny Smith Small Group Sessions. This magnificent 8-CD box set is a testament
both to Johnny Smith’s overwhelming technical command and his indomitable
musicality, and should go a long way towards cementing his stature amongst
other giants of 20th century guitar—including his own inspirations,
Andres Segovia, Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian—let alone such jazz
innovators as Lester Young and Charlie Parker.
And while Johnny would never co-sign such comparisons, the mere mention
of these jazz icons draws forth a wellspring of recollection.
“Well
I appreciate you saying that. Charlie
Parker was a very good friend of mine…when he was on this planet. When he was on the other stuff, nobody was
his friend. But otherwise he was a very,
very warm, down to earth, intelligent person; a very intelligent man, oh gosh
yes. And during the 1950s I did a tour
of about fifty one-nighters with this fantastic Basie band. Lester Young was there along with a whole
bunch of great people, like Sarah Vaughan and Joe Williams. I wrote a couple of arrangements for the
band, and I did a couple of solo spots with them—it was a very unique
experience. And so, yes, I deeply
appreciated what Charlie Parker and Lester
Young did, but I never tried to emulate them.
Charlie Christian came up to 
Goodman
band. Charlie went to a nightclub
afterwards, and I was privileged to meet him and hear him play. And when Django was in this country, I was
privileged to chauffer him around. He
was playing at the Café Society uptown, and I’d pick him up and we’d go hear
Les Paul at the Paramount Theater and then I’d take him back to the Café
Society, so I was privileged to get to know him and hear him play. And of course I worshipped him when I was a
kid and those records first came out on 78s.
I got about three plays out of them on this old Clavinola I had before
it tore up the record—but I was able to copy some of his solos.”
These experiences and
inspirations manifest themselves throughout the Mosaic box. All the more remarkable when you consider
that this native of
Portrait Of The Artist As A Young
Hillbilly
Johnny On
His Martin Flat Top With Uncle Lem & His Mountain Boys
Analyzing the hallmarks of Johnny Smith’s mature
style during the primacy of his Roost years, and identifying how—consciously or
subliminally—he absorbed all that he heard into a personal style, is one of the
great joys in exploring the Mosaic box.
First and foremost,
Johnny was a remarkably gifted balladeer, with a profoundly romantic
conception, as exemplified by his use of closed voicings on “Moonlight In
Vermont” and “Stars Fell On Alabama”. 
Here, his beautiful amplified tone and
supple voice leading suggests a keyboardist’s conception, somewhere between
that of a Hammond Organ and a harp to these ears—and his comping behind Stan
Getz is simply sublime. He extends upon
this feeling throughout the Roost sessions on magnificent ballad performances
such as “I’ll Remember Clifford,” and particularly on solo guitar arrangements
that run the stylistic gamut from the American song book (“Autumn 
Nocturne”),
to the modern classical repertoire (Debussy’s “The Girl With The Flaxen
Hair”)—as well as folk and country music sources, such as “Black Is The Color (Of My True Love’s Hair)”
and “Shenandoah.”
Even more impressive are
Smith’s up-tempo arrangements of “Tabu” and his own composition “Jaguar,” where
the guitarist,
Getz and pianist Sanford
Gold articulate his jagged, twisting lines in tightly voiced harmonies which
portray a scaled down big band concept (again, the interplay and cohesion Smith
and Getz achieve is remarkable).
Elsewhere, on Johnny’s “Samba” (with it sly, hard swinging interpolation
of the “…one little-two little-three little Indians…” cadence at the beginning
of his solo) and Smith’s most famous composition, “Walk Don’t Run”
(a medium tempo bounce
based on the chord changes to “Softly As A Morning Sunrise”), Smith’s
single-note solos evince the characteristic grace, relaxation and coy feeling
for the beat that distinguish the southwestern solo style of Lester Young and
Charlie Christian (sans the elemental bluesiness, though he mines plenty of
feeling from Ray Bryant’s “Pawn Ticket” and Gigi Gryce’s “Blue Lights”).
But for a real eye-opener,
there’s nothing quite like hearing Johnny Smith pop the clutch and air out the
V-8 as he does with his phenomenal intro to Billy Strayhorn’s “Sophisticated
Lady” or on the jump tempo of “S’Wonderful,” as his giddy, bubbling runs recall
the unbridled gypsy spirit of Django.
And for boppish adventure, post-modernist tension and flat out swing,
Johnny sure acquits himself like a jazz thoroughbred on Lester Young’s “Tickle
Toe” (where his blazing lines reflect the syncopated complexity of Charlie
Parker), and on my own personal fave, Bud Powell’s “Un Poco Loco.” On the latter Johnny routinely doubles and
triples up the time and superimposes astringent, asymmetrical harmonies over
the changes in the abstract manner of post-modern saxophone virtuosos such as
Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane—pretty heady stuff to pull off on a
guitar. There is a swooping, airborne
quality to these solos—akin to watching test pilot Chuck Yeager ascending
heavenwards as though gravity were an affliction to be borne solely by
landlubbers.
In truth, flight is a
defining metaphor for Johnny Smith, the man and the musician. Johnny began hanging out at the local airport
soon after he and his family hit
Johnny On His Gibson L-5
Shortly
Before It Was Stolen From A Checkroom In
“And after the war, when I got to
Because there were no
guitars in military bands, Smith literally had two weeks to learn enough
trumpet to qualify him for the band, otherwise a dreary stint as a grease
jockey in the mechanic’s corps awaited him.
However, against all odds, Johnny pulled it off.
Arturo Toscanini
“I Was
Always Very Careful Not To Attract His Attention.”
Eventually Smith became so good, that the Army
promoted him to the lead trumpet chair, and his reading progressed to such a
degree that after the
war he was able to nail
down a prestigious gig as staff guitarist at NBC
(a position he held from
1946-1958), where
he was more than equal to the task of playing for such daunting leaders as
Benny Goodman and the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini—not too
challenging a taskmaster. “You’ve got
that right,” Johnny exclaims at the memory.
“Yes, sir, he was a tyrant all right—but he was also a genius. I’d get the call if they were performing an
opera and needed a guitar. I remember at
one rehearsal he got so angry that he took this beautiful pocket watch
and came down with it so hard on the podium, that
the springs and gears and glass were flying all over the place. I
was always very careful not to attract his
attention.”
Due to the varied demands of
this steady work, Johnny was encouraged to play such a wide variety of music
that all his sundry experiences began to coalesce into the rudiments of a
personal methodology. “One of the
problems with the guitar is, by transposing it an octave higher than what it
sounds, you put it into the tenor clef, which is like an extension of the tenor
banjo, and that’s the way they wrote for the guitar in the early days—with this
total disregard for what the bass notes were.
Well, I always encouraged guitarists to be fluent in both the bass and
treble clef—because that’s where the
guitar sounds. I once performed a piece
called “Serenade” that was composed by Arnold Schoenberg. And he didn’t know anything about the guitar,
nor did he need to know anything. They
showed him the pitch and what he wrote was in bass and treble clef. As a matter of fact, when I was doing studio
work in
“I’m not out to change the
world, but that was my upbringing as far as my career as a professional
player. And that changed my approach to
the guitar—it’s a very orchestral approach to the instrument. But in the end, everything has to be
simple. I don’t care what field it is;
everything has to be simple—if it’s complicated, it’s no good. And that’s my approach to the guitar—make
everything simple. With one exception,” 
he laughs, “and that’s the
6/9 chord. And you’ve seen all these
guitar books, right, with 5000 guitar chords?
Well, that’s nothing but utter confusion. What I did in the music method I wrote for
Mel Bay (The Complete Johnny
Smith Approach to Guitar) was to boil everything down into about four
different components, which includes major, minor, major third intervals and
minor third intervals; and when you look at it that way, and dig into that
concept, then everything becomes much more clear, simple…and correct.”
To which we might add, intimate,
articulated and beautiful—qualities that extended to the very personal
relationship Johnny maintained with a number of top luthiers, leading to a
succession of fine arch top guitars he employed over the years. Johnny’s needs as a musician and as a gigging
guitarist were such that he helped influence some of the most significant
refinements in the design of f-hole arch top guitars since the L-5 was first
introduced back in 1924 by Lloyd Loar and the Gibson design team.
Lloyd Loar
Father Of
The Modern Arch Top Guitar
During the ’30 and ’40, master luthiers such as John
D’Angelico, Elmer Stromberg and Epi Stathapoulo helped perfect the arch top…as
a rhythm instrument. But due to
Smith’s practical experience of the arch top guitar—and the need to interface
with an amplifier—he became a catalyst for significant refinements in the
evolution of the guitar as a modern solo instrument.
“Early on in my career I
tried different guitars. I had a Martin,
but it just didn’t seem to fit the bill for what I wanted to do. The arch top was a much better instrument for
extensive chording up and down the neck, and also it seemed better suited for
single-note picking. And of course, it
had better carrying power, because in those days there was still a need for
rhythm guitars in the orchestras and big bands, and the flat top just didn’t
have the carrying power that the arch top did.
My first arch top guitar was a Gibson L-5, a non-cutaway model that was
strictly acoustic. And in the early days
there were really no decent pickups for acoustic arch tops, but as the pick-ups
started to develop, 
such as the early D’Armonds
and pickups like that, I no longer had to step up to the mike.
R:
L: 1946
Epiphone Emperor
“Then just before I left Portland, Maine, to go to
NYC and work for NBC, my L-5 was stolen from the check room at the hotel where
I was playing, so when I got to New York I was really scratching, and of course
I wasn’t able to work until I got my union card, so Gretsch made a guitar for
me, but that didn’t work out, so I used a big Epiphone Emperor when I first
started at NBC. Just before a broadcast
we were on break and had gone down to Hurley’s for a little libation. And when I got back to the studio, that
guitar was gone. And then John
D’Angelico made me a guitar. I had a
hard time getting D’Angelico to take any money for the guitar he built for me. I had to force it on him, and even then I
only got him to take like $250…a wonderful man. But then a house I was renting out on 
my original D’Angelico
guitar was destroyed. So no, Chip, I
didn’t have too much luck with guitars.
“Anyway, John Collins, a very dear friend, had an
older D’Angelico that he let me use while John was building me another
guitar. I liked his D’Angelico so much,
I wouldn’t give it back, and I had D’Angelico build him a guitar, one of the
early cutaways. So I played John D’Angelico’s
guitars all through the ‘50s and early ‘60s, and Gibson
was after me all that time to endorse one of their instruments.
Master
Guitarist John Collins
“I Liked His D’Angelico So Much, I Wouldn’t Give It Back…”
“Finally I went to John and told him ‘Gibson wants
me to design a guitar for them,’ and John encouraged me to go ahead, and I
designed a guitar that was a little different in its conception, such as in the
higher register: having the neck go directly into the body, and employing
cross-bracing—all to make the upper register of the guitar sustain more. The arch top guitars of those days were
hollowed out underneath the fingerboard in the very high registers. It kind of made the upper register hard to
play because the fingerboard had a tendency to drop off starting around the 15th
fret. So by putting the neck directly
into the top with no space underneath, it was perfectly flat and playable right
to the very last fret; plus it gave me wonderful sustain right up to the 20th
fret—I guess I was one of the original nuts to go for the full range of the
instrument.
“I have fairly small hands,
so I employed a 25” scale, like on the D’Angelicos, which was just more
comfortable for me, and I had them build the body of the guitar a little more
shallow than the L-5s, so while it was still a 17” instrument, it wasn’t as
deep. Also, most of the arch tops prior to that used the bass bar
concept, like in a bass violin: two braces that ran along the length of the top
of the guitar. It made for a very loud
instrument, and for rhythm guitar it was wonderful. But for balance, and for even-ness and
sustain, the cross bracing solved that problem. The two braces crossed just below the end of
the fingerboard, like X marks the spot, and the energy on the very high notes
of the neck, starting with the high G on the first string, would be transferred
from the fingerboard into the X-bracing which would transmit it in to the
resonating sound-board.
Gibson’s Johnny Smith Signature Model
“Ultimately I ended up using a flat-wound low E string on that instrument. You see, I
used three different tunings, but my standard tuning was with the sixth string
tuned down to D, and I had to come up with an extra-large gauge to accommodate
that. Everything else was normal. Another tuning I employed was with the sixth,
the E string, down to D, and the fifth string, the A string, down to G. Then on some solos I used your standard E
minor tuning. But it was the D
tuning, that was my normal tuning.
And so I employed a flat wound sixth string because with a round wound,
number one, you got a lot of noise, and secondly, it had a nasty habit of
chewing up guitar picks. Problem was
that in the early days, the quality of flat wound strings was terrible;
intonation was terrible—I used to prop the strings up off the neck and take a
water glass to take the edge off of the round wounds. Finally, Black Diamond came out with a
burnished string. You got the response and the sweetness, but a
little less noise. That was the
#100 set, and I used those for years, and when Black Diamond stopped making
them I bought up every set I could find in the country. That’s the only reason I could think of
having a U-Haul behind a hearse—to take my guitar strings with me. There are a
lot of good strings now, and the half-round strings are very good, too.”
As for
amplification, Johnny’s experiences and frustrations echo those of every jazz
guitarist who ever tried to plug an acoustic-electric arch top into an amp and
set the gain loud enough to project over the drummer and still maintain a
clear, balanced sound without the entire rig howling like a hound in heat.
Guild Johnny Smith Signature Model
“Well, number one, the amp is the culprit, and number
two, placement of the amp is very important,” Johnny consuls. “It’s vital to have the amp on your immediate
left, with the neck pointing towards the amp, instead of in front or in back or
on the right. That eliminates a lot of
feedback, and of course, your bass response is the other culprit. I always
considered the amp to be an extension of the guitar, in other words, I tried to
get an amp that sounded like the guitar.
I always had a problem with the standard amps like the Fenders. And I tried to get an amp that wasn’t real
heavy on the bass end—that’s what causes most feedback problems.
“So the
first amp that I used for many years was not a guitar amp—it was an
Altec-Lansing amplifier with an Altec-Lansing speaker. And then Ampeg’s
Everett Hull built me an amp I could use, and I think they called it the
Fountain of Sound as it stood up on its legs and pointed straight up. But it had a much flatter frequency response
than the commercial amps, such as the Fender which were much more suited to
solid-body electric guitars.
“I like an
amp that has a pretty flat frequency response, without too much gain in the
treble or bass. The best way I could
explain it is forget the treble and forget the bass and concentrate on the
midrange, which is where, speaking only for myself, the guitar really sounds. I’m not criticizing anyone; your sound is a
very personal thing, and whatever sounds the best is the way it should be. To
give you an idea, Gibson made the amp I used for many years (which I latter
gave to Chet Atkins’ son), and even with the bass control full on, it still had
less bass than a Fender amp did with the bass full off. And the Fenders seemed to have too much of a treble
sound, instead of a rounded sound in the high registers.
Johnny With His Benedetto Cremona
“Finally,
some years later, I asked these folks from a company in
Smith kept recording until
1968 (when he cut Phase II for Verve), and continued to teach and
perform around
“I was in a small plane, and
I was giving instructions, when my finger got caught up in this fold-down type
of seat which clamped down on my finger.
I lost about a quarter of an inch off of my ring finger on my left hand,
and I was out of commission for about a year.
And a Dr. Jack King, still a very dear friend of mine, did some grafting
and managed to build it up some, but it was never the same. And things I used to do before, which came so
easily—like long arpeggios, and the long stretches on chords—became a lot
harder. That’s no excuse, though. Django was outrageous with just two
fingers.
“But then
the Ventures came out with their version of ‘Walk Don’t Run’ and that kind of
saved the day. I was always grateful to
Chet Atkins, and if it wasn’t for his version of ‘Walk Don’t Run’ inspiring the
Ventures to do their arrangement, I don’t know how I would have survived that
period without the income that came in from that song. The Ventures hadn’t ever heard my version of
the song. They only heard Chet’s [from
the 1957 RCA Victor recording Hi Fi in Focus.] So I don’t claim any of the credit for the
success of ‘Walk Don’t Run.’ As a matter
of fact, I didn’t even name the song. I
called it “Opus,” but it was Teddy Reig, the owner of Roost Records, that named
it.
With the
royalties from “Walk Don’t Run” and the Johnny Smith Gibson, Johnny opened up a
small music store in Colorado Spring and devoted himself to his new wife Sandy
and their children. His final years as a
performer and recording artist were more acts of friendship and camaraderie and
sharing than an expression of ego or ambition.
This extended to relationships with his students and those jobs he chose
to accept as a performer that might take him out of town. His last big time gig was with no less a
personage than Bing
Crosby in 1976. “The bad
things that you read about him were not true and all can be explained
away. The tours I did with Bing in the
two years before he died were wonderful.
He loved musicians, especially guitar players, going all the way back to
Eddie Lang, and so he and I got along great.
We also had a lot in common, such as our love for hunting, fishing and
the great outdoors, and I’ve kept some letters that we wrote back and forth—he
was just my good buddy.” Even his
final recording from 1976 wasn’t a formal affair. “That was never intended to be a commercial
recording. I did it to have something to
pass out at seminars so people could hear my standard arrangements of pieces
someone else could perform, and Carl Jefferson
[Editor: the kindly looking gent pictured above with the beard and glasses]
of Concord Records kept after me
for years to do a recording, and finally I said I have this thing I did if
you’re interested, so I sent him a cassette.”
Then sometime during the
mid-80s he curtailed his teaching and
stopped making public appearances. When
I inquired as to whether he’d stopped playing or simply stopped performing,
Smith’s response was both. It
broke my heart to hear him say that, but Johnny is speaking from a more
elevated perspective. “I tell people that I made enough mistakes for one
guitar player—let somebody else at it. To sit around and just plunk on the guitar is
nothing but frustration. Because to
really come close to doing what you think you’re capable of doing, you have to
stay on it all the time—all the time.
It’s a physical challenge. No,
you’re either performing or you’re out of it.”
“That’s tragic,” Pat Martino remarked when I passed
along this story, though he quickly added as to how “…it’s true—you’ve really
got to be out there in front of people under combat conditions to keep that
edge.
And, he
doesn’t feel like doing it, huh?”
I thought about it for a second and then told Pat,
“Well, in the end I think he found the notion of maintaining the levels of
practice, discipline and road work involved in living up to the standards of being
Johnny Smith so daunting, that he wasn’t willing to settle for presenting a
shadow of Johnny Smith.”
“In other words, he’s been intimidated by himself,”
Pat laughed…long and hard. “If anybody
would understand that from the get-go, it’s me, because I’ve been working very
hard to confront and compete with my own past.”
However, having said all that,
and as someone who was six years old when Johnny Smith left New York for
Colorado Springs, I’ve always had a little twinge of regret about never hearing
him play live—although in a weird way, that only adds to the elemental mystery
and musical magic behind the name, and makes recorded encounters all the more
precious.
Johnny Smith And Mundell Lowe Take
A Curtain Call
The Chord
May Be Diminished, But Johnny’s Greatness Endures
However, my dear Cyber-Colleague from England, Guy
Littler-Jones (who fronts a nice little fan site called The Jazz Guitar)
reports that when aficionados gathered at the Fourth North Wales
International Jazz Guitar Festival in August of 2003, at various points
over the course of the next five days, Johnny was literally ambushed with their
love, and did indeed pick up the guitar for a handful of musical cameos, such
as an intimate little encounter with fellow jazz guitar legend Mundell Lowe and
a master class in which he was cajoled into a performance of…well, why don’t we
let you enjoy Guy
Littler-Jones tell you that story on his web site.
In any event, this made me
think that perhaps there’s hope…hope that Johnny might relent, that there might
be a few more draughts of water remaining in the well. Subsequently, in kvelling about
Johnny’s mastery with his old comrade in arms, the great Hank Jones, the
pianist allowed as how he might try and get Johnny to undertake some sort of
duet recording project.
I thought I would run this inspired notion up the
flagpole perchance Johnny might salute.
The Great
Hank Jones
“…The Chopin Of Jazz Piano.”
“Johnny, I understand those jazz guitarists at the
Nort Wales Festival suckered you into paying a little.”
“Very little,” he demurred.
“Well, my friend Guy tells me that it was simply
goose-bump city when you played “Send In The Clowns.”
“Well, now, that’s extremely generous of him.”
[Knock, knock…come in?]
I kept searching for an opening…perhaps now’s the
time to play my Hank Jones trump card.
He can say no to me, but how could he say no to Brother Jones?
“Well,” Johnny said warmly, “I think the world of
Hank. I always refer to him as the
Chopin of jazz piano.”
“I know, I know, and when I told him that he was
completely blown away. And of course, he
had all sorts of lovely things to say about you. And, not that I didn’t coax it out of him a
little bit, but Hank thought he might try and approach you about maybe taking
on a duet project in the studio.”
I could practically hear
Johnny smile and shrug at the same time, and once more he politely explained
that for him those days were past. “I
talked to Doc
Severinsen recently, and he asked me if I ever played anymore. And I told him, no. And he asked, ‘Well, what about picking up
the instrument and playing a bit around the house.’ And I told him, nope—never. And he told me that he’d reached the point
where he was thinking about hanging it up.
‘And when I toot that last note, on that last night, of that last concert,
that’s it—from that point on my trumpet is a lamp.’”
Well, I reasoned, in the company of a musician like
Hank, where there’s such a strong rapport, and where the keyboard can carry so
much of the weight…
Ka-Ching. No
“Well, I’m a selfish fan, Johnny” I teased him, “and
short of showing up on your porch, having a few drinks and asking you to maybe
pull out the guitar and show me a few chords, there are so many of us who would
love one last opportunity to experience your artistry. So at the risk of sounding hokey, let me try
a Zen approach. Wouldn’t be nice to be a
student of music again?”
“A
student?”
“Sure,” I
enthused, “at the service of music, like sitting on the back porch, and picking
for the fun of it, improvising in the company of a kindred spirit, and just
kind of letting the chips fall where they may—playing for your own personal
pleasure?”
“Well,
Chip” Johnny chuckled patiently, “as a jazz musician, once you reach the point
of puberty, there really is no turning back.
And at that juncture, you’re never playing purely for yourself—you
are always performing. You see, the
interaction with an audience is what the experience is all about. And you don’t get any enjoyment, and you are
not fulfilled, just sitting around the house and plunking away for
yourself. And to perform, to really
perform, consistently and at the highest levels, is what being a musician
is all about. I’ve talked with Artie
Shaw about this, and he told me the same thing.
Once he was through performing on the clarinet that was it. He never touched it again”
Pablo Picasso
The Old Guitarist
“Well,” I laughed wanly, “you can’t blame a guy for trying.”
But such
are the cycles of life, and while those of us who weren’t there to experience
it for ourselves might bemoan our fate, that is why a century or so of
recordings, cinema and photographs allow us to participate on some level, to
get some sense of the original events and the times in which they were
lived.
So while
we might have missed the catalytic interaction, the creative give and take
between a performer and live audience that could make a gin joint like Birdland
and all the other clubs on
Still, Johnny Smith himself would be hard-pressed
to find anything tragic in all of this.
“I’ve led a very fortunate
life, Chip,” he reassured me. “I can’t
think of anything in life that I could realize as being better than the life
I’ve had. And that’s really all
true. It’s been a dream life in many
ways, and I feel very fortunate that I was in the music business at a point
that I consider to have been the very apex of live music. When I was back in
Johnny
Smith Breaks It All Down To The Basics
“…Everything
Has To Be Simple—If It’s Complicated, It’s No Good.”
“Of course, at the point I left
“Sure is, Johnny.
Just the like kid in me I guess, like the way you never want a summer’s
day to end. Anyway, I feel so blessed
just to have gotten to know you, baby.”
“Well
I feel blessed to know you, too, Chip, and I certainly appreciate your
friendship, and all of the nice things you and Jack [Wilkins] and the other
fellows have had to say about me and my music on your web site. It’s all very humbling, and I certainly wish
you had a more interesting subject to talk about. Anyway, listen my friend,” Johnny announces with breezy finality. “It’s cocktail time out here, so I’ve
got to go, but it’s been a pleasure talking with you, as always.”
Go Johnny.
Go...
Johnny
still be good.
