Johnson, Charlie (actually, Charles Wright)
Johnson, Charlie (actually, Charles Wright)
Johnson, Charlie (actually, Charles Wright), jazz pianist, leader; b. Philadelphia, Nov. 21, 1891; d. N.Y, Dec. 13, 1959. Raised in Lowell, Mass. Johnson began on trombone, and played withvarious bands in N.Y. c. 1914. Then he moved to Atlantic City and concentrated on piano. There, he led his own band from c. 1918, until Oct. 22, 1925, when he brought the band to N.Y to open at Small’s Paradise. For over a decade he led the resident band at Small’s (includingJabbo Smith in 1929), occasionally returning to Atlantic City for summer seasons. Johnson toured in the late 1930s, but ceased full-time leading in 1938. Through the 1940s, he gigged in N.Y, but a long spell of ill health curtailed his activities in the 1950s. He died in the Harlem Hospital and was buried in the Frederic Douglass Cemetery. He should not to be confused with the one-time Duke Ellington trumpeter, Charlie Johnson, who died early in 1937.
Discography
The Complete Charlie Johnson Sessions (1925); Harlem in the Twenties, Vol. 2 (1955); The Complete Sessions (1996).
—John Chilton, Who’s Who of Jazz /Lewis Porter