Bunk Johnson

Willie Gary "Bunk" Johnson (December 27, 1889 – July 7, 1949) was a prominent American jazz trumpeter from New Orleans.
 

Early life and education

Johnson gave the year of his birth as 1879, although Johnson stated on his 1937 application for Social Security that he was born on December 27, 1889, and there is speculation that he may have been younger by as much as a decade. According to jazz critic Scott Yanow, Johnson was probably born in 1889.

Johnson was the youngest of 14 children. He had been schooled in sight reading and improvisation by the time he began playing professionally with the Superior Orchestra and the Eagle Band in 1910. He claimed to have attended New Orleans University, although no diploma from the college survives.

Johnson received lessons from Adam Olivier and began playing professionally in Olivier's orchestra. Johnson probably played a few adolescent jobs with Buddy Bolden, but was not a regular member of Bolden's Band (contrary to Johnson's claim). Johnson was regarded as one of the leading trumpeters in New Orleans in the years 1905–1915, in between repeatedly leaving the city to tour with minstrel shows and circus bands.

Career

After he failed to appear for a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade job in 1915, he learned that krewe members intended to do him bodily harm. So he left town, touring with shows and then by the early 1920s settling in New Iberia, Louisiana. While living in New Iberia, Johnson worked in rice mills and the public school system, and continued playing jazz, but with local groups such as the Black Eagle Band from Crowley and the Banner Orchestra.

In 1931, he lost his trumpet and front teeth when a fight broke out at a dance in Rayne, Louisiana, putting an end to his playing. He thereafter worked in manual labour, occasionally giving music lessons.

Career revival and first recordings

In 1938 and 1939, the writers of an early jazz history book, Jazzmen, interviewed several prominent musicians of the time, including Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Clarence Williams, who spoke highly of Johnson in the old days in New Orleans. The writers tracked down Johnson's address and traded several letters with him, where he recalled (and possibly embellished) his early career. Johnson stated that he could play again if he only had new teeth and a new trumpet. A collection was taken up by writers and musicians, and he was fitted with a set of dentures by Bechet's dentist brother, Leonard, and given a new trumpet. He made his first recordings in 1942 for Jazz Man Records.

Later touring career

These first recordings propelled Johnson (along with clarinettist George Lewis) into public attention. Johnson and his band played in New Orleans, San Francisco, Boston, and New York City and made many more recordings. Johnson's work in the 1940s shows why he was well regarded by his fellow musicians. On his best days, he played with great imagination, subtlety, and beauty, as well as suggesting why he had not gained prominence earlier, for he was unpredictable, temperamental, with a passive-aggressive streak and a fondness for drinking alcohol to the point of impairment.
 

Death and legacy

Johnson suffered from a stroke in late 1948 and died in New Iberia the following year.

Jazz historians have debated Johnson's legacy and the extent to which the colourful reminiscences of his early career were accurate, misremembered, exaggerated, or untrue. Although in recent years, new evidence has appeared in jazz historian Vic Hobson's 2014 book, Creating Jazz Counterpoint. New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues, in which it is stated that Buddy Bolden's band member Willy Cornish — who is seen on the only surviving picture of the Bolden Band — affirmed Bunk Johnson as a member of the early jazz group. This puts Johnson's own statements and recordings, in which he actively recreated the Bolden tunes, in a plausible and positive light, making them of great historical and musicological importance to the study of jazz and New Orleans jazz in particular.

His recordings have been reissued on CD.

Johnson was a Catholic, and as of 2019, an annual Jazz Mass and procession was conducted in his hometown of New Iberia, beginning at St Edward Catholic Church and ending at Johnson's gravesite.

In about 1996, Bunk Johnson Park was dedicated to his memory in New Iberia, Louisiana. Twenty years later, in 2016, the park was dismantled due to criminal activity in the area.

The Iberia Parish Library hosts an archival collection of Johnson's papers and a special exhibit room for Johnson.