The Father of Harlem Stride
The name James P. Johnson remains largely unknown to the general public, but it is not too much to say that he was one of the most important musicians in New York during the 1920s. The “roaring twenties” saw dramatic changes in American and world-wide culture, including music. Many important musical benchmarks that shaped the decade of abandon have had lasting impact that continue to this day. The twenties saw the explosion of improvised, swinging music emerge from ragtime lending one nickname for the era, the “jazz age.” The twenties was the first golden age of Broadway, with over 500 openings during the decade on the Great White Way. Out of one of these shows came the song and dance that remain the signature emblems for the time, the “Charleston.” The surreptitious provision of alcohol as part of the rent party scene was powered by the muscular piano style that came to be known as Harlem Stride Piano. The classic blues/vaudeville singers were all the rage. While popular, ethnic and dance music reigned, a resurgence of more serious African-American arts developed known as the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson was pivotal in the development of all these musical streams.
Johnson was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on February 1, 1894. His first influences were from his mother’s religious Methodist leanings as well as the vernacular ring shouts she and her friends performed in the family parlor when James was supposed to be in bed. He absorbed the popular tunes of the day as well as the ragtime piano he heard friends of his older half-brothers playing. When the family moved to New York in 1908 after a stay in Jersey City, he began serious piano lessons from Bruto Giannini. He readily developed as one of the best ragtime players and by the late 1910s expressed his aspirations to compose for the musical theater as well as the concert hall. He spent about a year in the upper mid-west, and returned to New York in 1920 armed with a new piano style and great ambition.
Johnson is best known in jazz as the Father of Harlem Stride Piano, the two handed orchestral jazz piano style that he pioneered. His recording of the stride anthem “Carolina Shout” was recorded in 1921 and is acknowledged as the first jazz piano solo on record. Johnson’s style influenced generations of subsequent pianists including Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Mary Lou Williams, Art Tatum, Erroll Garner, Thelonious Monk and many others. He was the favorite accompanist of singers Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters and others. Out of his 1923 Broadway show Runnin’ Wild came the signature tune of the decade, the “Charleston.” He scored all or part of over 40 musical theater productions in his nearly forty year professional career. Johnson most importantly saw himself as a composer, and took the imperative of the Harlem Renaissance thinkers to heart. It was his greatest dream to cast the vernacular elements of African American music into larger symphonic forms that would be taken seriously by the musical academy.
Beginning in the early 1910s, and over the course of 35 years, Johnson sought out conservatory trained musicians, both Black and white, for his private study of technique, music theory, harmony, composition, counterpoint, instrumentation and orchestration. He intended his music to tell the story of the distinctive role of his race in the mosaic of America’s ethnic heritage. He began writing his extended pieces in the mid-1920s, first producing his piano rhapsody Yamekraw. In 1930, he moved out of Harlem to the fashionable neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens to concentrate more on his composing. By the late 1930s, he had completed two symphonies, a piano and clarinet concerto, two ballets, two one-act operas and a number of sonatas, suites, tone poems and a string quartet. While some of these pieces were performed during his lifetime, his efforts to generate interest by high profile musicians were mostly met with rejection. Johnson had attempted to fuse traditions in ways that challenged them all. Despite their contemporaneous dismissal, these pieces reflect the honest intensions of a craftsman steeped in the gamut of American musical form, who produced accessible expressions of ethnic pride, expansive aspirations and personal experience.
James P. Johnson managed to maintain a very active musical life in jazz and the musical theater until he suffered a paralyzing stroke in 1951. His “firsts” include the first jazz piano solo on record with “Carolina Shout,” in 1921, the same year he became the first African American contracted staff pianist for the Q.R.S. Music Company, the largest manufacturer of piano rolls in the country. In 1942, he was the first African American pianist to appear on commercial TV, and it is not a stretch to claim he invented the jazz vocal accompaniment. He died in 1955, and most of his obituaries appropriately acknowledged the breadth of his career including his symphonic writing. He would have been very pleased.
-Scott E. Brown 2021
Scott E. Brown is the biographer of James P. Johnson. His first book, James P. Johnson- A Case of Mistaken Identity, was published in 1987. He is completing a new biography of Johnson with hopeful publication in 2023. Dr. Brown is a practicing physician and holds a Masters Degree in Jazz History and Research from Rutgers-Newark.
Image: Gottlieb, William P. Portrait of James P. James Price Johnson, New York, N.Y.?, ca. May. , Monographic. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/gottlieb.12631/>. Used with permission.