Cashbox : 09/28/1957

The jazzist, out for another solo stint since the famed J.J. Johnson – Kai Winding group ended its jazz run, is featured as part of a quartet in this Columbia issue. Performing in mostly medium-tempo attacks, trombonist Johnson alights with exhilarating freshness on evergreen and original program. Paul Chambers (bass); Max Roach (drums) and Tommy Flanagan (piano) expertly support Johnson. Major jazz entry.

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Miami Herald (Miami, FL)
Fred Sherman : 12/01/1957

Columbia uses the popularity polls to salute J.J. Johnson’s new album. It’s called First Place (CL-1030). The trombone player is teamed admirably with Max Roach, a prize-winning drummer, and bassist Paul Chambers and pianist Tommy Flanagan. J.J. gets a warm sound from his horn as he moves effortlessly through nine tunes that mix the ballads with some crisp originals.

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Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA)
Russ Wilson : 11/03/1957

Title refers to J.J. Johnson, who for the last two years has won trombone division of all the major jazz polls. Appearing here with only a rhythm section (Max Roach, Paul Chambers, Tommy Flanagan), J.J. has more room than usual; the result is a blowing session with most of the music improvised. Johnson shows his fantastic technique in settings ranging from a beautiful, legato For Heaven’s Sake to the racing Nickels and Dimes.

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San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA)
C.H. Garrigues : 11/17/1957

Another fine set by a musician who is generally considered the greatest of the trombonists. Thoughtful and sometimes moving, J.J. is supported by Max Roach, Paul Chambers and Tommy Flanagan (who is emerging as a better and better pianist with each album on which he appears.)

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Saturday Review
Martin Williams : 11/16/1957

Occasionally spelled only by T. Flanagan’s piano, P. Chambers’ bass, and M. Roach’s drums, trombonist Johnson manages to sustain five standards and four jazz tunes at a level of sly wit and polished good-spirits, and to give the best account of himself on records in some time.

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Toronto Star (Toronto, ON)
Roger Feather : 11/09/1957
Four Stars

Perennial poll-winner Johnson has one of his better opportunities to exhibit his talents on this LP. Although his strong supporting trio get adequate solo space it falls to J.J. to make this a good LP. Only rarely does he falter.

Johnson puts his velvet legato tone with no vibrato to good use on ballads such as the haunting For Heaven’s Sake and the well-arranged Cry Me A River. He mixes this with a brisk staccato style on the swinging original Nickels And Dimes and the up-tempo Commutation. The best tune is the head-shaking Sonny Rollins’ blues, Paul’s Pal.

On some tunes, particularly Paper Moon, J.J. tends to be slick and he rushes through without feeling. The rhythm section is excellent all the way with Flanagan getting a good solo on Commutation and Max a good one on brushes in That Tired Routine.

Johnson is technically one of the best trombonists in jazz and when he plays with feeling he has few peers as an all-round soloist.

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Down Beat : 12/12/1957
Leonard Feather : 3.5 stars

After having been heard with everything from one other trombone to seven other trombones, and then with his own no-other-trombones combo, J.J. gets down to the bare bones in this, his first Columbia album made entirely solo with rhythm.

The subtraction of other horns, far from damaging the results, merely enables the listener to concentrate on J.’s faultless blowing and on the just-about-perfect rhythm section that provides, individually as well as collectively, the rest of the kicks.

Chambers has arco solos on Paper and Commutation. Harvey’s is a funky blues à la Doodlin’; Nickels and Dimes is an original at Sputnik tempo. Of the ballads, Cry surprises with its moderato swinging tempo and J.’s restrained muted solo; Routine, one of the lesser-known Matt Dennis tunes, has some fine gentle Roach brushes in the eights with J. toward the end.

Any rating on these sides must depend on many external factors—how many of J.’s LPs you already own, how much importance you attach to arrangements, variety of sounds, and originality of material. For some, this will be a five-star album. Certainly the title, with the attached explanation concerning J.’s unique record as a poll winner, is fully justified from start to finish.

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Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

First Place refers to the impressive frequency and ease with which J.J. Johnson tops jazz polls throughout the world. In the past couple of years, for example, J.J. has led the trombone balloting in readers’ polls conducted by Metronome and Down Beat in the United States (two in a row for J.J. in both instances); and Jazz-Hot in Paris (at least four years running). He also won the Down Beat Critics’ Poll, in which writers on jazz from several countries and many publications participate, in 1955 and 1956.

For those skeptics, and they are many, who question whether readers’ or even critics’ polls prove anything, J.J. has won an even more notable election. When Leonard Feather polled over 100 jazzmen for his Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz, J.J. was the first choice of his peers.

J.J.’s emergence into universal jazz recognition by listeners, critics and musicians occurred only after a number of years of apprenticeship, self-searching, and not a little scuffling. He was born in Indianapolis January 22, 1924; studied piano at 11, and trombone at 14. He told J. Lee Anderson of Theme magazine (he won their 1956 poll too): “…during my second year of high school, I began to hang out with a bunch of fellows, all musicians. As time went by, these particular guys induced me to take up an instrument to sort of fill out their little ensemble. There were all kinds of players except a trombonist. We used to be great record fans… that was a period of great Basie doings, Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Ellington, all the terrific big bands—and we used to spend a lot of time at each other’s house listening to what was going on.”

J.J.’s father, recognizing how serious the youngster had become about music, bought him a trombone. J.J. was graduated in 1941, and the next year, was on the road despite his family’s opposition. He worked with Snookum Russell in 1942 when he met Fats Navarro. “Fats had a tremendous influence on my musical outlook in general,” J.J. told Anderson, “because he was already playing so great and I was still trying to get with it, so to speak.” When the Russell band evaporated, J.J. returned home. Benny Carter came through Indianapolis; in need of a trombonist, he let J.J. sit in for a couple of sets. J.J. left town again and was with Carter for nearly three years. “Benny Carter,” J.J. emphasized in the Anderson interview, “is one of the greatest musicians I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. The whole time that I was in Benny’s band, it was one continuous education in music.”

After Carter came Basie, and J.J. was with the Count from 1945-46. Basie wasn’t recording much at the time, and J.J. can be heard in solo only on Rambo and The King. J.J. returned home again after Basie; and somewhere around this time, he also played in various small combos on 52nd Street. During this period, he was further developing the ability to adapt the newly commanding jazz conception of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others to the trombone. J.J. became the first thoroughly assured and individual modern jazz trombonist, and he has since become the key influence on that instrument for most of the younger modern trombonists.

J.J. toured with Illinois Jacquet from 1947-49; worked with the Woody Herman and Dizzy Gillespie bands; went to Japan on a rather stormy Oscar Pettiford USO tour in 1951; and then, to quote from his talk with Anderson again, “things began getting sort of wound up, going around in circles for me, so I decided to leave the jazz scene for an indefinite period. I wanted to get my thoughts collected and see just what I wanted to do.”

From August 1952 to June 1954, he was a blueprint inspector in a factory, and gigged occasionally, but not too frequently. I remember talking with him at Birdland during the spring of 1954; and it was clear by then that his relative inactivity as a musician was beginning to weigh on him. His job represented security; but the drive, the need to resume full-time musical living was becoming increasingly compelling. In August 1954, he teamed with trombonist Kai Winding for what resulted in two surprisingly successful years. The surprise was due to the fact that a two-trombone front line was unprecedented in jazz, and there were doubts at first whether the jazz public might not find that instrumentation limiting in sound. Rarely, however, has a new combo been received so warmly so quickly. They recorded a sizable number of albums, traveled and retraveled the jazz night-club circuit, and played the Newport Jazz Festival a month before their dissolution. The team split not because of a diminution of bookings, but because both by then had become attracted and challenged by the idea of heading (and exploring with) units of their own.

Kai formed a septet with a front line of four trombones while J.J. added to his horn the Belgian-born tenor, flutist and clarinetist, Bobby Jaspar. In the summer of 1957, J.J. toured the Scandinavian countries with his present unit; and initial reports as of this writing, indicate that J.J. will win all Scandinavian polls for some time to come.

This current LP represents a departure, to some extent, from J.J.’s previous albums on Columbia. Up to now, in his sets with Kai and with his own quintet, J.J. has generally moved within the framework of carefully wrought arrangements. This is more of a blowing date, a suggestion by J.J. with which Columbia’s head of jazz and popular albums, George Avakian, quickly concurred. There were sketches on each number—J.J. is so precise a spirit by temperament that he is not apt to leave all to luck, even on a blowing date. And in some cases, there were even fuller arrangements. But basically, the four sessions that make up this and a succeeding album were conceived and executed as relatively free, almost entirely improvised conversations. In fact, J.J. and his colleagues fused into so mellow and free-flowing a groove that it was decided to record not only the one album scheduled but the aforementioned second set as well. The average number of takes per number, estimates recording director Cal Lampley, who produced the dates, was two—a clear index of how little tension and how much rapport existed between the four musicians.

In reporting his impressions of America to readers of Jazz-Hot in early 1957, French critic André Hodeir wrote of J.J.: “J.J. est scrupuleux, précis, impeccable—un peu figé peut-être dans sa perfection.” A few besides Hodeir had noted in print that J.J. sometimes was so scrupulous, precise, and impeccable, that there was occasionally an impression of his being a little congealed, not entirely free with his emotions. In this set, however, as the only horn player, J.J. let himself go farther emotionally than he has in most of his record sessions in recent years; and there is very little in his work that sounds figé here.

Cal Lampley recalls: “J.J. was very, very happy, overtly so. After the sessions were over, after having recorded so much, I was at a complete loss as to what to use. I called J.J. for help. We relistened to the tapes; he chose the tunes for the first album; and he said it was difficult for him too, to select between them.” Since J.J.’s criteria for his own work are demanding, this must have been a rare session indeed from his perspective. “For me,” Lampley added, “these were among the smoothest sessions I’ve handled. There was little or no work to be done. I sat back and listened.” Were there any comments from the sidemen? “Just general-type jubilation,” recalled Cal.

Paul Chambers agreed. “I’ve always admired J.J. He’s the greatest; he’s got a terrific mind and his tone quality on his horn is more than superb. I guess he was somewhat looser on these dates because he was the only horn. It was more like just jamming. It was certainly a good date. It was very enjoyable.”

Worth noting is the variety of moods J.J. and his associates sustain in the album. There are ballads; reanimated standards like It’s Only a Paper Moon, and a few unpretentious, agreeable originals. And there is a yea-saying blues, dedicated to the valuable New Jersey jazz disc jockey and night club owner, Harvey Husten.

J.J.’s supporters on the album are all well known and widely lauded. Max Roach is also a recurring poll winner, and won the aforecited Musicians’ Poll too. Max’s work on this record is a consistent example of tasteful, sensitive, pulsatingly sure accompaniment. Paul Chambers, 22, perhaps the most brilliant bassist of his age group, is a remarkably inventive soloist, pizzicato or arco. Tommy Flanagan, who, like Chambers, gained his early jazz experience in Detroit, is a consistently lucid, swinging, imaginative pianist who gets a fine, firm, singing sound from his instrument.

Returning to J.J., in the Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz he paid tribute to his first major influence: “The late Fred Beckett, once with Harlan Leonard’s orchestra and shortly afterwards with Lionel Hampton, was the very first trombonist I ever heard play in a manner other than the usual sliding, slurring, lip trilling or ‘gut bucket’ style. He had tremendous facilities for linear improvisation; in general, Beckett’s playing made a very lasting impression on me.”

Unfortunately, Beckett was not too well represented on records, and so his influence wasn’t as widespread and as fructifying as it apparently deserved to be. J.J., however, has certainly kept Beckett’s spirit alive; and by developing so personal and convincing a style himself, J.J. through his many recordings and frequent travels, has made “a very lasting impression” on a generation and more of jazz trombonists. J.J. is one of the jazzmen whose voice has become a major integral part of the jazz language. From now on, there’s almost certain to be some part of J.J. in nearly every young trombonist. In that strongly continuing sense, J.J. has immortality, so far as any of us can predict how long there will be jazz—or people.