Johnson, Money (Harold)
Johnson, Money (Harold)
Johnson, Money (Harold), trumpeter; b. Tyler, Tex., Feb. 23, 1918; d. Long Island, N.Y., March 28, 1978. Johnson began on trumpet at age 15, taking lessons from a local teacher, Leonard Parker. Soon, he did his first professional work with Eddie and Sugar Lou’s Hotel Tyler Orch., then played in Dallas for two years in a band led by his cousin, saxophonist Red Calhoun. Johnson played with local bands before joining Nat To wies in 1937. He remained with that band for seven years, then with the rest of Towles’s sidemen, he joined Horace Henderson (1942–44). He spent a long spell in Rochester with Bob Dorsey’s Band before rejoining Nat Towles at Rhumboogie in Chicago. During the mid-to-late 1940s, he alternated between Cootie’s Band and Lucky Millinder bands. During the 1950s, he worked for many leaders, including Louis Jordan, Lucky Thompson, Panama Francis (in South America), Buddy Johnson, Cozy Cole, Mercer Ellington, and others. During the 1960s, he played regularly with Reuben Phil-lips’s Band at the Apollo, N.Y.; he also did prolific studio work. He also toured Russia and Europe with Earl Hines (1966, 1968). From 1968-71, he played occasionally with Duke Ellington, and then resumed active freelancing until the night of his death.
—John Chilton/Lewis Porter