BRUCE JOHNSTONE by Gordon Jack

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journal and a very generous friend in allowing JazzProfiles to re-publish his insightful and discerning writings on various topics about Jazz and its makers.

Gordon is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospective and he also developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horricks’ book Gerry Mulligan’s Ark.

The following article was published in the 11 October, 2020 edition of Jazz Journal. 

For more information and subscriptions please visit www.jazzjournal.co.uk

© -Gordon Jack/JazzJournal, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

During the 1970s Bruce Johnstone’s name frequently appeared in Down Beat magazine’s annual poll for the best performer on baritone saxophone. In 1974 he achieved his highest ranking when he came third behind Gerry Mulligan and Pepper Adams. Those were the years when he had a high profile role anchoring the saxophone sections of Maynard Ferguson’s Orchestra and Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd. Along the way he also played with Mike Westbrook and Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

Born on 1 September 1943 in Wellington, New Zealand he began on the clarinet in 1951 and by the time he was thirteen he was getting paid for jazz bookings. His parents had entertained thoughts of a classical career for him but two weeks before he was born they attended a concert featuring Artie Shaw with the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet Band. He felt that this might have been a subliminal influence because Shaw along with Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Buddy DeFranco were performers he listened to rather than classical players. He did play second clarinet in the Wellington Junior Symphony for about a year or so. Flute was his second instrument and he took lessons with the internationally recognised James Hopkinson who was principal flutist with the New Zealand National Orchestra. Because of the popularity of Dave Brubeck’s quartet in the fifties he also took up the alto to increase his marketability. 

He quite soon gravitated to the baritone. He had only ever heard Harry Carney and Gerry Mulligan but the difference in their sounds intrigued him. As he told Herb Nolan in a 1975 interview, “The instrument is physically demanding. The first time I played it on a gig I was bedridden for two days. To get the right projection I was using muscles in my shoulders and stomach I’d never used before”. Anyone who has ever spent an evening with a baritone hanging from their neck for two or three hours will sympathise. Not for nothing has it sometimes been called a bottom-heavy monster. Serge Chaloff and Cecil Payne became his primary influences together with Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Charlie Parker and Stan Getz. To further his jazz education he ordered albums from mail-order companies in the States by artists like Freddie Hubbard (Open Sesame), Oliver Nelson (Screamin’ The Blues) and Benny Golson (Meet The Jazztet). He also listened attentively to recordings by Horace Silver and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

He left for Australia in 1964 and joined the house-band at Sydney’s famous Chequers night-club where Jackie Dougan (ex Ted Heath and Tubby Hayes) was the drummer. The band backed headliners like Lou Rawls, Billy Preston, Liza Minnelli, Dionne Warwick, Shirley Bassey, The Four Tops, Cilla Black, Georgie Fame and many more. He was a staff musician on TV shows and averaged three recording sessions a week but he decided to leave Australia in 1969 and move to Denmark. A lot of American musicians had settled there and that is where he got to play with Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew and Ben Webster. It was thanks to Gordon that he joined the booking rotation at Copenhagen’s Montmartre club where he regularly performed with pianist Thomas Clausen, bassist Bo Stief and drummer Alex Riel. He also played at La Fontaine with Al Grey (“Nice guy and a terrific player”), Horace Parlan, Don Cherry and some of John Mayall’s band. He spent some time in England with Mike Westbrook and he subbed for John Surman in the Brotherhood of Breath at Ronnie Scott’s.

Early in 1972 he was contacted by Maynard Ferguson who was living in the UK at the time. He had established a high-profile reputation locally leading the house-band on the popular Simon Dee TV Show. Bruce sent him a tape with his Danish rhythm section and the first title was My Funny Valentine which was a good choice as it was a favourite of Maynard’s wife - Floralou. The trumpeter sent him a telegram offering him the job which began at a concert in Scotland. The band was then booked for the Verona Jazz Festival which also featured Ella Fitzgerald, the Charles Mingus sextet and groups led by Phil Woods, Roy Eldridge and Max Roach.

His first album with Ferguson’s powerhouse band – M.F.3 - was recorded both in London and New York in 1973 (Vocalion 2CD SML 8429). The leader said at the time, “I’m not interested in nostalgia – you have to move along with the times” which he certainly did. He enthusiastically embraced the rock rhythms of the day but combined them with a satisfyingly straight-ahead jazz approach. Although new to the band Johnstone is heavily featured on the well-named Nice ‘N’ Juicy, Pocahontas, Love Theme From The Valachi Papers and S.O.M.F. It was performances like these that must have convinced Down Beat magazine that a major new baritone performer had arrived on the scene. His first live performance with the band was in Boston where Weather Report opened for them.

In March 1973 they appeared at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall where two albums were recorded with sleeve-notes by the eminent Alun Morgan. The concert’s highlight is Jim Webb’s magnum opus MacArthur Park which had been an unlikely hit for Richard Harris in 1968. It became a staple in Ferguson’s repertoire and over the years it also found favour with other big band leaders like Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Joel Kaye, Mike Vax and Dan McMillion. Johnstone who is from the hard swinging Ronnie Cuber-Nick Brignola by way of Leo Parker school is centre stage on a passionate performance that roars from the bottom of his horn to some expertly controlled altissimo. His technique here is just breath-taking. (Status CDDSTS 1004/1007).

Two months later the band was recorded at Jimmy’s Jazz Club in New York and once again Bruce has MacArthur Park all to himself. It’s another inventive performance which finds him settling into an extended vamp, ultimately incorporating a Sonny Rollins-like calypso groove. He stands toe-to-toe with tenor-man Ferdinand Povel on an exciting series of exchanges on the up-tempo Two For Otis – a contrafact of There Will Never Be Another You. Ernie Wilkins’ Stay Loose With Bruce is pretty much all baritone and his seven choruses become a veritable tour-de-force. During his final twelve bars Randy Jones begins a delicate press-roll gradually increasing the volume until it assumes Art Blakey-like proportions propelling the band into an exhilarating shout-chorus. The leader had first recorded it in 1956 as a feature for Herb Geller’s immaculate alto when it was called Geller’s Cellar. They revisit Nice ‘N’ Juicy which has a suitably soulful outing from Johnstone and Got The Spirit opens with an emotional statement from him creating a down-home Ray Charles “Goin’-to-the Meetin’” feeling (Vocalion 2CDSML 8429). On the band’s 1974 Chameleon album he is featured on the title number and on Superbone Meets The Bad Man. The leader plays his superbone (a combination valve-slide trombone) here in a duet with Bruce ‘Bad Man’ Johnstone (Columbia 512256 2). Talking about the band at the time he said, “The whole evening starts out at a high intensity level and builds”.

I asked him where they usually performed and he replied, “Everywhere! Festivals, clubs, Universities, European dates and a tour of Japan.” In July 1974 they played a concert at Carnegie Hall but although the thirteen titles they performed including the inevitable MacArthur Park were recorded, they have never been released. About his time with the band he told me, “I liked Maynard. Any reputation I have is due to his giving me lots of solo space in concerts and on recordings”. Apart from the leader he was probably the most heavily featured soloist in the band at the time.

He left Ferguson in 1976 and Bobby Militello took over on a borrowed baritone. Four years later he began a long and very successful spell with Dave Brubeck’s quartet on his primary instrument, the alto.  Bruce formed a jazz-fusion group called New York Mary with Rick Petrone, Lew Soloff and John Scofield. Their two albums on Arista Al 1019 and Al 1035 were “Hitpicks” in Billboard and Cashbox magazines. Later that year he joined Woody Herman. An audition was unnecessary because the leader had heard him at festivals and was aware of his Down Beat poll ranking. He did an extensive European tour with him which climaxed with a concert in West Berlin featuring Gerry Mulligan as guest soloist performing Take The A Train, Easy Living and Pound Cake. On the band’s 1978 album Road Father he has an extensive feature on Sunrise Lady which he wrote and arranged for Woody. It’s an up-tempo samba with a band-within-a- band concept with Birch Johnson (trombone), Dennis Dotson (trumpet) and Bruce carrying the engaging melody. He has a rare bass clarinet outing on Pavane which demonstrates another more lyrical side of his musicality. Even more unusual is his tongue-in-cheek vocal contribution to I Got News For You – “You wore a diamond watch, you said it came from Uncle Joe. I looked at the inscription, it said love from Daddy-O!” (Century CJCD 829). Sleeve-note writer Herb Wong said, “Bruce Johnstone is probably the strongest baritonist Woody has had in the last two decades”. Quite an accolade when you consider that Ronnie Cuber and Mike Brignola (no relation to Nick) had been in the band during that period.

  “I liked Woody and he treated me well but I decided to leave in 1978. The money wasn’t great but I was able to live pretty well and even save some. We travelled by bus and I got to see a lot of the world while getting paid to do it. I approached it all as a tourist”. Trumpeter John Bennett who was with Herman in the sixties had a different view of the remuneration, “The pay was atrocious! You have to save up for these kinds of gigs”. Years ago I asked Gene Allen who played baritone with the band in the fifties and sixties what he thought of the Four Brothers voicing. “I liked it although it was not much fun for the baritone because you are in the upper register a lot. I much prefer the conventional sax line-up where the baritone plays double-lead or has a contrapuntal role.” Bruce has no such reservations however. “I loved the tenor lead. As a section player I’m comfortable with whatever range the arranger puts me in.”

After leaving the band he got married and eventually settled in Ripley, a small country town on Lake Erie. He worked briefly with Clark Terry (“Dear man and wonderful player”) and it was Terry who helped him obtain his Green Card which allowed him to live and work permanently in the USA. He wrote a “Glowing recommendation” which was one of the documents that helped impress the Immigration Service at his interview. The clerk told him that she used to dance to Woody Herman when she was in college and she asked if the band still played Woodchopper’s Ball? Bruce assured her it was played, “Every night”. Woody himself once said quite ruefully, “It was great the first 1000 times we played it!” He maintained a busy schedule of music clinics and concerts throughout the Western New York State, Pennsylvania and Ohio areas. On two occasions he was Artist In Residence at Penn State University and he has been the featured soloist with the Navy Commodores in Washington D.C. He often plays with the Buffalo Philharmonic along with Bobby Militello (“Great player”). In 2001 he did a brief tour with the Mike Vax Big Band which featured Stan Kenton alumni although Bruce never actually played with Kenton. A CD celebrates the event which includes his own Sunrise Lady (Summit DCD 356).That was the year he became the Director of Jazz Studies at the State University of New York, a position he held until 2015. He organised big bands, small groups, string ensembles and vocal groups there and occasionally appeared in concert with artists like Teddy Charles and Arturo Sandoval. 

In a recent communication he explained his musical philosophy: “Ben and Dexter both taught me the value of learning lyrics, how to play ballads and how to drive a rhythm section. Both were friends, teachers, mentors and my musical heroes. I’ve gained something from everyone I’ve ever played with. They remain a part of who I am”.

I would like to thank my old friend Bruce Talbot for contacting his fellow New Zealander on my behalf. He is a fine tenor player and we played in numerous bands together in the mid-sixties until he moved to America to take up a position with the Smithsonian. He is the author of Tom Talbert - His Life And Times (Scarecrow Press).