James Johnson – born on February 1, 1894 in New Brunswick, New Jersey – was a jazz pianist and composer. He is often regarded as one of the most important piano player during the early recording era. His most famous composition is “The Charleston”, which is now referred to as the anthem of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. As a child, his mother taught him to play classical music, but as he got older, he began to focus on playing ragtime and the blues. While still a teenager, he began performing in public in the early 1910s. Shortly afterwards, he recorded music intended to be played by player pianos which worked on the principle of perforated rollers. His popularity in New York grew as he became an influence to young pianists of the 1920s and 1930s. At the beginning of the ‘20s, recorded his first record and served as the accompanist to some of the era’s most popular singers: Ethel Waters, Ida Cox and Rosetta Crawford, and Bessie Smith. A prolific composer during this crucial period of jazz, his talent and knowledge of European music allowed him to easily switch from writing ragtimes to jazz and then concertos for piano and orchestra. His compositions were later used for film scores beginning in the late 1920s and continuing into the next century. Johnson is considered the last great ragtime pianist and the first great jazz pianist. His recordings and compositions have been compiled many times, including the 1950 release, The Daddy of the Piano, which captured Johnson performing eight of his most famous compositions. James Johnson died on November 17, 1955. Since his death, he’s been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1970), Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame (1973), Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame (1980), and ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame (2007). In 1995, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative James P. Johnson postage stamp. In 2020, his song “Carolina Shout” was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame.
