J.J.'s way

The Harvard University Jazz Band tribute to Johnson this Saturday honors a 72-year-old musician whose skill as an instrumentalist has often overshadowed his ability as a composer. The Harvard concert will showcase Johnson the player and writer, with premieres of new arrangements of some of his best-known tunes, a recently rediscovered arrangement the teenage Johnson wrote for Benny Carter's orchestra sometime during his three years with the band between 1942 and 1945, and a rare opportunity to hear Johnson perform as an unaccompanied soloist.

Actually, Johnson once characterized his chosen instrument as a "horrid thing." When asked why, he replied over the phone from his home in Indianapolis, "Visualize a trumpet player playing, then visualize a trombone player playing. If you picture it in your mind, you realize that the trombone is ungainly and awkward and clumsy."

If the trombone is unlovely to look at, in Johnson's hands it sounds like a thing of beauty. Saturday night the audience will get an undiluted example of Johnson's velvety sound when he plays at least one unaccompanied solo. "I've done it one or two times in the past and it's been very effective. There's something very theatrical about any instrumentalist performing unaccompanied, and with the trombone, it's maximum theatricality."

Although plans were not final when we talked, his solo is "likely to be dedicated to Kai Winding," the trombonist with whom he led a popular quintet from 1954 to 1956. Winding's grittier, riffing approach perfectly complemented Johnson. And yet Benny Green was the original choice for the recording session that gave birth to the band.

"Benny Green was doing quite well without J.J. Johnson because he had a mild hit going at that time," Johnson explains. "So he just didn't want to do it. Producer Teddy Reig -- it was his idea to do two trombones in the first place -- decided to go after Kai Winding when Benny wasn't interested. I didn't know Kai personally, I knew about him, but we didn't know each other until then." For the quintet's first album, Jay and Kai (Savoy), Johnson dashed off a ballad that has since become a jazz standard, "Lament." The Harvard concert will feature a new brass ensemble arrangement of "Lament" by Robert Farnum, the British composer who scored Johnson's last release, Tangence (Verve).

Following the quintet's break-up, Johnson slowly gained recognition as a composer. A 1959 commission from the Monterey Jazz Festival resulted in his classic "El Camino Real," which he has "dusted off and written a new extended version of" for the concert. A late-bloomer as a composer, Johnson eventually left the jazz world for Hollywood, where from 1970 to 1987 he scored television shows and films, including Mod Squad episodes, and worked on the soundtrack for Shaft.

At Sanders Theatre a Johnson tune of more recent vintage, "Why Indianapolis? Why Not Indianapolis?", will showcase saxophonist Dan Faulk, who replaced Ralph Moore in Johnson's working quintet after Moore joined the Tonight Show band. (A new CD from the quintet with Moore is due from Verve in July.) "When I moved back to Indianapolis from California," Johnson says, "and started playing and traveling again, people would ask me why. The short answer is, `Why not Indianapolis?' It's my roots, I was born and raised and went to school here. What's so strange about it?"

What is strange is learning that he had no formal musical training. He credits Miles Davis with helping him early in his career. "Miles and I were very, very close friends. He was still in Juilliard at the time, and because of our friendship he would pass along a lot of things to me.

"Other than what I learned in high school, I only studied on my own initiative, just being curious and determined to learn how to compose and arrange. I don't think there's an advantage to learning that way at all. I think you get at what's important and avoid a lot of blind alleys by going to music school. There are people who believe strongly in learning by the seat of your pants -- as I did, as many of us did, I'm not unique -- but I think there's a greater advantage in doing it formally."

The Harvard Jazz Band with J.J. Johnson performs this Saturday, April 20, at 8 p.m. at Sanders Theatre. For tickets and information, call 496-2222.