Jay and Kai - J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding - Tonal Trombone Textures

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Jay Jay Johnson and Kai Winding have formed a group. Why didn't such a natural combination band together before? It's almost like asking why jaii musicians don't work more often. The important fact is that they are together and Jan will benefit.

Their association is not necessarily a new one [on a permanent basis that is) and although it may not have been the dream of each to have a combo jointly, it very likely might have been a subconscious desire because there has always been a respect for and enjoyment of each others' playing.

They started from opposite directions, Kai from hit birthplace in Aachui Denmark and Jay Jay from his in Indianapolis. Kai came to the United States with his parents in 1934. Both served their apprenticeship with various jmall-name bands. After this came the name bands. Kai played with Benny Goodman and Stan Kenton. At the same time Jay Jay was with Benny Carter and Count Basie. And then came New York. Who that knew them, will ever forget the halcyon days of the Forties when the music that they tagged "bop” flowered on both 52nd St. and Broadway. I remember nearly falling off my chair at the Spotlite Club in 1946 when I first heard Jay Jay sit in with Dizzy Gillespie and rip off intricate ensemble and solo passages with fluency equal to that of Diz.

There were other nights at the same club, and Jay Jay fronting a quartet with an old grey felt beanie hanging on the bell of his horn to give a singularly delightful tonal effect. Then there was the Roost in 1948 with Kai coming into his own in a group with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Allen Eager and blowing mightily every night from under the artificial tree.

Their careers have crossed and run parallel at different times. When the great Miles Davis band recorded for Capitol, Kai was in on the first sessions and Jay Jay replaced him on the later ones. The Chubby Jackson All Star Band (Prestige 105) had both as its trombone section and their "conversation" choruses on "Flying The Coop" were actually the forerunners of their present group.

Don't get the idea that I'm going overboard into the sea of nostalgia. i in just standing by the rail on the ship of reality looking back over the ror-izon. Jay Jay and Kai played great in those days but they are playing greater today. They have combined as mature and polished musicians who still have the love of jazz and the fire to play it.”

- Ira Gitler, insert notes to Kai and Jay Bennie Green and Strings [Prestige OJCCD -1727-2/Prestige 7070]

Somewhat ironically, my first exposure to the quintet co-led by trombonists J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding was on a Columbia LP that they shared with the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

It was recorded in performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival and emcee Willis Conover says at the beginning of their set that their appearance at the NSJ constituted a sort of farewell appearance as a unit! Nothing like coming in at the end.

As George Avakian, the producer of the LP further explains in the liner notes to the album: “Their amicable parting was based purely on a desire each one has to pursue again a separate career after having brought off a daring experiment. J. J. has since formed a quintet of his own and Kai has a septet featuring four trombones. Both groups will shortly be heard on Columbia Records.”

Although I came in at the end, so to speak,  had great fun, then [during the analog era] and now [during the digital era] amassing a collection of the group’s recorded output and listening to the very enjoyable music created by these giants of modern Jazz trombone.

Here’s more information about the background of both trombonists, the formation of their group and a description of some of the music on their recordings. If you haven’t heard the music made by the singular quintet, you might want to check it out for all the reasons detailed below.

“The dominant bebop trombonist, J.J. Johnson's saxophone-influenced sound has been criticized as unidiomatic and insufficiently 'brassy' - whatever that means - but there is no mistaking his preeminence in the recent history of jazz. Born in Indianapolis [1924-2001], Johnson emerged in Benny Carter's orchestra and as part of Jazz at the Philharmonic, but he left an indelible mark as half of Jay and Kai with fellow-trombonist Winding. ...

Johnson is one of the most important figures in modern jazz. Once voguish, the trombone, like the clarinet, largely fell from favour with younger players with the faster articulations of bebop, Johnson's unworthily low standing nowadays (his partnership with Kai Winding, as 'Jay and Kai', was once resonantly popular) is largely due to a perceived absence of trombone players with whom to compare him. In fact, Johnson turned an occasionally unwieldy instrument into an agile and pure-toned bop voice; so good was his articulation that single-note runs in the higher register often sounded like trumpet. He frequently hung an old beret over the bell of his horn to soften his (one and bring it into line with the sound of the saxophones around him.

Kai Winding [1922-83] was born in Denmark and came to America in his early teens. He was around to see the birth of bebop and helped to devise a fast, clear-toned delivery for the trombone, a development which also had an impact on how the horn sections of big bands could sound. His long partnership with J.J. Johnson is definitive of the modern history of the instrument.

The success of Jay and Kai was, in the end, not altogether equitably shared. J.J. Johnson's unchallenged dominance on the trombone as a bop voice was always questionable, Whereas J.J. brought a saxophone-like articulation to the instrument, it was Winding who showed how it could follow the woodwind players fast vibrato and percussive attack and still retain its distinctive character. While with the Kenton hand, Winding worked on ways of producing a very tight vibrato with the lip rather than using the slide, and this had a marked impact on a younger generation of players. … There remains, to be sure, something a little cold about Winding's work. Certainly, compared to J.J., he couldn't give a ballad more than a gruff expressiveness, but that was not his forte. What he did, he did well, and he deserves more credit for it.”

[Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.]

Johnson is the most important postwar jazz trombonist and a major Influence on all players of the instrument. His earliest recorded solos up to 1945 reveal a thick tone, aggressive manner, and impressive mobility. They are not yet far removed, though, from the solos of his early influences - Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, and the trombonist Fred Beckett, who emphasized the linear qualities of the instrument rather than the effects of the slide.

During the 1940s Johnson developed such an astounding technical facility that some record reviewers insisted, erroneously, that he played a valve trombone; the speed of his playing and the clarity and accuracy he achieves at fast tempos have never been surpassed. In 1947 he began to play with a lighter tone (occasionally enhanced by a felt mute) and reserved vibrato for special effects. The result was a rather dry but attractive sound resembling that of a french horn. Johnson also worked diligently at this period to adapt bop patterns to the trombone, and his solos suffer from an emphasis on speed and an overreliance on memorized formulas incorporating such bop trademarks as the flatted 5lh. His performances on both versions of Crazeology with Charlie Parker (1947) begin with the same phrase and contain other whole phrases in common. The same is true of the two renditions of Johnson's celebrated solo on Blue Mode (1949), despite their very different tempos.

During the late 1950s Johnson's playing matured: he relied less on formulas and speed, and more on a scalar approach and motivic development. Recordings of live performances dating from this time provide examples of brilliant developmental sequences that were delivered with powerful emotion.”

- Lewis Porter

“Winding was one of the first bop trombonists and one of the most important. The distinct sound he brought to Kenton's trombone section was achieved partly by his persuading the players to produce a vibrato with the lip rather then with the slide (van Engelen). His solo work was characterized initially by a rough, exuberant, biting tone, recalling earlier trombone styles (a fine example may be heard on Kenton's recording of Lover, 1947), though a more restrained manner is evident in the brief solos he contributed to the first of Miles Davis's sessions that resulted in the Birth of the Cool (1949). On forming the group Jay and Kai, Winding began to produce a delicate sound; he improvised in a manner so close to that of Johnson that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two musicians.”

- Les Jeske

[ The Porter/Jeske annotations are in Barry Kernfeld, Ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.]

“Another remarkable trombone section, totally different from Ellington's was that of Stan Kenton's orchestra. Beginning in the mid-1940s, its style initiated and set by Kai Winding, it revolutionized trombone playing stylistically, especially in terms of sound (brassier, more prominent in the ensemble) and type of vibrato (slower, and mostly lack thereof), as well as by adding the "new sound" of a bass trombone (Bart Varsalona, later George Roberts). The Kenton trombone section's influence was enormous and pervasive, and continues to this day. Although the section's personnel changed often over the decades, it retained an astonishing stylistic consistency, not only because such stalwarts as Milt Bernhart and Bob Fitzpatrick held long tenures in the orchestra, but because incoming players, such as Hob Burgess and Frank Rosolino and a host of others, were expected to fit into the by-then-famous Kenton brass sound. …

But the biggest breakthrough on the trombone toward full membership in the bop fraternity was accomplished by J. J. Johnson, who essentially proved convincingly that anything Gillespie could do on the trumpet could now also be matched on the trombone. Johnson is regarded as the true founder of the modern school of jazz trombone, developing astounding (for the time) speed and agility on the instrument, and thus becoming a charter member of the bop evolution/revolution. These outstanding qualities, as well as his solid, full, rich, centered tone, can be happily savored on "The Champ" (DeeGee, with Dizzy Gillespie) and "Jay and Kai" (Columbia, 1955).

Johnson spawned a host of followers, foremost among them Jimmy Cleveland, whose speed and dexterity on the trombone were even more dazzling than J. J.'s (which led to him being called "the Snake"), the Danish-born player Kai Winding (with whom J. J. teamed up in a highly successful two-trombone duo) in the 1950s, the Swedish trombonist Ake Persson, and young turks like Frank Rosolino, Frank Rehak, Urbie Green, and Jimmy Knepper. All were spectacular technicians, easily expanding the range of the trombone to the trumpet's (!) upper register (high B flat and C), and with their new-won technical wizardry capable of playing things that a few years earlier could have only been played on a trumpet, or a flute or violin.”

- Gunther Schuller from his essay The Trombone in Jazz, in Bill Kirchner, Ed., The Oxford Companion to Jazz

When J.J. and Kai first formed their unit in the mid-1950s, it was quite common for the LP producer to also write the liner notes [referred to today as insert or sleeve notes].

George Avakian produced a number of the Jay and Kai recordings for Columbia and we can learn quite a lot about the background of how their group came to be and their approach to arranging the music for it from the following excerpts from his liner/sleeve notes.

“'You can’t play all night in a club with just two trombones and rhythm!’ a friend told Kai Winding when he announced that he and J. J. Johnson were going to do just that.

He was wrong, but awfully right at the same time. The answer is that you can do it. But not with 'just two trombones." You have to have the best — Kai Winding and J.J.Johnson.

Their ability as trombonists is only part of the story. The entire "book" for the group has also been written by them, and it is their imagination as arrangers which has carried off this tour de force even more than their extraordinary talent as soloists.

Jay and Kai have done it the musicianly way, with no gimmicks — just solid musicianship. Working without a guitar, which would have given them variety in the coloring of the solos as well as another voice in the ensembles, makes their job that much harder. But in order to get engagements in clubs, they had to confine the group to five men and the added challenge has only spurred them to greater creative height.

Each has had a wealth of big band and small combo experience. During the bop era, Jay was in the rare position of establishing a school of trombone playing which consisted of himself alone; no one else was remotely in his class. Kai came up through the big band field, achieving prominence as a soloist with Stan Kenton in 1946. In recent years, both men have gigged extensively with small groups, and Kai still keeps his hand in as a studio sideman between the guintet's bookings.

The arranging of the book has been divided equally between them, and each man has contributed several fine originals. Their choice of repertoire is discriminating; they seem to have a knack of choosing half-forgotten but exceptional show tunes and songs which are fine vehicles for "class" singers. (Perhaps the lyric quality of their trombone playing is responsible for this taste.) Both play with a technical ease which is the envy of lesser slide men. Although they play quite unlike each other most ol the time, there are many occasions on which it is impossible for even their closest followers to tell them apart.

Watching them at work is almost as much fun as listening. When they trade off alternating muted phrases on a fast tune, as in Let's Get Away From It All and The Whiffenpoof Song, it's a wild sight to see them each keep pace with the lightning routine of mute up, mute in, blow, mute out, mute down, new mute up, mute in, blow, and so on. Never once during these sessions did either ever flub a phrase or even blow a bad one. Nor were there any easy cliches. Even under pressure, each listened carefully to what the other was playing and kept a logical line flowing.”

From his insert notes to Trombone for Two J.J. Johnson - Kai Winding [Columbia LP CL 742 in 1955; Collectibles CD 6674; Sony A-50662]]

George Avakian also shared more of his thoughts about the special qualities of Jay and Kai as performances and the distinctive qualities of their trombone Jazz in these excerpts Jai & Kai + 6: The Jay and Kai Trombone Octet; [Columbia CL 892 in 1956; Collectibles CD-5677; Sony A-26542].

“It is not true (not yet, anyway) that trombonists throughout the world have been raising funds to erect a monument to Kai Winding and J.J. Johnson in recognition of their unique contributions to the elevation of the estate of trombone playing.

This is about the only honor left for their fellow practitioners to bestow upon this extraordinary pair of musicians. The public has shown its appreciation of their work as co-leaders of one of the most unusual quintets in the jazz field (two trombones and a rhythm section), and there are even true-blue jazz fans who have given their ultimate recognition in the form of declaring that Jay and Kai are so popular that they must be out of bounds--although the day of the starving but uncompromising jazzman is being rendered a little passe' by the public's ever-growing interest in jazz [would that this would continue to prove true, sadly, it didn’t].

Jay and Kai, who are apparently fearless, have set themselves another difficult goal in this album, but the results literally speak for themselves. Their self-imposed challenge was to make an entire album with eight trombones (six orthodox-type horns and two bass trombones) and their usual rhythm section of piano, bass, and drums. On some of the tunes, they themselves play tromboniums, which are upright valve instruments of similar range and nearly the same tone, developed to replace the more cumbersome slide trombones in marching bands. (Slide trombones have to be placed up front so they can be played freely, which isn't the best set-up for tonal balance.) ….

The arrangements for this eight-trombone idea were executed by Jay and Kai themselves. Juist how they managed to do this - and do it so well-during their busy personal appearance tours is something I haven't figured out yet, and I'm sure neither Jay nor Kai are as yet in condition to explain coherently, either. Suffice to say that they made it despite some mighty close deadlines. Coffee - very strong and black - was one of the principal ingredients that made it possible.

Getting the right men to play these difficult arrangements was a problem, too, but fortunately the sessions came at a time when six of the best trombonists in New York were available for all the sessions. They are Urbie Green, Bob Alexander, Eddie Bert, and Jimmy Cleveland, with bass trombonists Bart Varsalone and Tom Mitchell. Their rhythm section consists of Hank Jones (piano), Milt Hinton (bass), and Osie Johnson (drums), except on Night in Tunisia, All At Once You Love Her, The Peanut Vendor, Four Plus Four, and The Continental, in which Hinton was replaced by Ray Brown. Candido Camera is added on conga drum and bongos as noted in the analyses of the individual arrangements, given below.

An extraordinary variety of sounds were created by this unique ensemble. The final results are a tribute to the Columbia engineering department, as well as the arranging skill ol Jay and Kai and the extraordinary performances of these two fine trombonists, and their six cohorts. There are times when the brass choir sounds as though it is divided into middle-register trumpets blended with trombones, and occasionally there is even some of the quality of an unusually rich saxophone section blended with trombones. No tricky effects were used to get these sounds; they are all in the scoring. What you get is the full artistry of two gifted arrangers and eight spectacularly fine trombonists. …”

And Dick Katz, who played piano with the quintet for a number of years, wrote the notes for The Great Kai and J.J./ J.J. Johnson & Kai Winding [Impulse 225] which was recorded as a sort of reunion LP in 1960 and from which the following excerpts are taken.

“"I don't know anything about music, but I know what I like."

This bon mot is usually attributed to the celebrated Common Man, and while the sophisticate might wince upon hearing such a bromide, an element of truth is present. The sentence often indicates that knowing how music is made does not necessarily assure one's enjoyment, or even enlightenment.

The intellectual, armed with the tools of musical analysis, will not experience music any more intensely than someone not blessed with musical scholarship — if the conditions for being "moved," or emotionally stimulated, do not occur in the music. Indeed, knowing too much can actually interfere with hearing the music. You see, music has to do with feelings, and the knowledge of what makes it tick should be a bonus that adds to or enhances the listener's understanding. It should never be a substitute for emotional involvement.

Now, the "conditions" referred to above are what concern us here. Good jazz does not come out of the air like magic. True, a genius sometimes creates this illusion, but in the main, it is the result of an artistic balance between the planned and the unplanned. Even the great improviser is very selective, and constantly edits himself.

Throughout the relatively short history of jazz, many of the great performances have been ensemble performances where the improvised solo was just a part of the whole. This tradition of group playing, as exemplified by Henderson, Basie, Ellington, Lunceford, John Kirby, Benny Goodman's small groups, the great midwestern and southwestern bands, big and small (Kansas City, et. al.), almost came to a rather abrupt halt with The Revolution.

And that is exactly the effect Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and their colleagues (J. J. Johnson among them) had on jazz music. Their extreme improvising virtuosity seemed to take the focus off the need to play as a group. But herein lies the irony — the precision with which they played their complex tours de force was due in large measure to the extensive ensemble experience they gleaned as members of disciplined bands like Hines, Eckstine, etc. It was their talented, and not-so-talented, followers who often missed the point. Musically stranded without the opportunity to get the type of experience their idols had (due to many factors, economic and otherwise), they resorted to all they knew how to do — wait their turn to play their solos. This type of waiting-in-line-to-play kind of jazz has nearly dominated the scene for many years. Although it has produced an abundance of first-rate jazzmen, many excellent performances, and has advanced some aspects of jazz, the lack of organization has often strained the poor listener to the point where he doesn't "know what he likes."

So, in 1954, when J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding formed their now celebrated partnership, one of their prime considerations was to help remedy this chaotic state of affairs. Both men, in addition to being the best modern jazz trombone stylists around, were fortunate enough to have had considerable big and small band experience. They astutely realized that a return to time-tested principles was in order. Variety, contrast, dynamics, structure (integrating the improvised solos with the written parts) — these elements and others which give a musical performance completeness — were accepted by Kai and J.J. as both a challenge and an obligation to the listener. This awareness, combined with their individual composing and arranging talents, plus an uncanny affinity for each other's playing, made their success almost a certainty.

That success is now a happy fact. From their Birdland debut in 1954 to their climactic performance at the 1956 Jazz Festival at Newport, they built up an enviable following. Also, they have created an impressive collection of impeccable performances on records. That they overcame the skeptical

reaction to the idea of two trombones is now a near-legend. One only need listen to any of these performances to demonstrate once again the old adage — "It ain't what you do, but the way that..."

The respective accomplishments of J.J. and Kai have been lauded in print many times before. Their poll victories, festival and jazz-club successes are well known. Not so obvious, however, is the beneficial effect they have had on jazz presentation. Their approach to their audience, the variety of their library (a good balance between original compositions and imaginative arrangements of jazz standards and show tunes), together with their marvelous teamwork, helped to wake up both musicians and public alike to the fruits of organized presentation. With the jazz of the future, organization will be an artistic necessity; the future of jazz will be partially dependent on it, as is every mature art form.”