James P. Johnson’s house

[171-38 108th Avenue, Jamaica, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The WPA tax photographs are not especially generous to anyone looking up the addresses of jazz musicians who made their homes in Queens. There’s no photograph of Count Basie’s house (174-27 Adelaide Road), no photograph of Milt Hinton’s house (173-05 113th Avenue). Whole blocks of Queens are missing from the archives. But James P. Johnson’s house is there.

Who was James P. Johnson (1894–1955)? He was a brilliant pianist and a major influence on a host of later pianists. He was the composer of “Carolina Shout,” “The Charleston,” “If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight),” “Old Fashioned Love,” Yamekraw, a Negro Rhapsody, and “You’ve Got to Be Modernistic.” If you’ve seen Casablanca, you’ve heard “If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight),” and if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may have already heard “You’ve Got to Be Modernistic.” ¹ By 1930, Johnson had moved from Manhattan to Jamaica, Queens. Fats Waller would later live half a mile away.

Duke Ellington, like Waller, was among the many pianists indebted to Johnson: as a young musician still in Washington, D.C., Ellington slowed down a piano roll, learned the intricacies of “Carolina Shout,” and played it for the visiting composer. Here’s Ellington playing the piece in 1965 as a prelude to “Rockin’ in Rhythm.” Ellington would sometimes try a stride showpiece from his early years and give up, pleading the absence of a real left hand. But in the 1965 clip he has at it. His pseudo-autobiography Music Is My Mistress has a beautiful tribute to Johnson. It ends:
James he was to his friends — just James, not Jimmy, nor James P. There never was another. There never was another.

¹ I cannot resist pointing out that the guitarist in the scene from Casablanca is Corinna Mura. She later sings “Tango delle Rose.” For a time she was Edward Gorey’s stepmother.

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[Posted on March 1, but the Blogger archive refuses to list it there.]