Making improvised music in the Black American tradition means fixing your gaze firmly on the future while honoring the innovators of the past. 2024, with the centenaries of drummer Max Roach and pianist Bud Powell, has been a good year to do that. Yet while those two lions of bebop were deservedly celebrated for the way they redefined the language of their instruments, trombone master J.J. Johnson’s contributions have received less recognition—until now.
Trombonist John Fedchock is determined to see that his distinguished predecessor gets his flowers, and he’s put his money where his mouthpiece is on a Midwest tour that will bring him to Akron’s BLU Jazz+ and BOP STOP in support of his new Summit Records release Justifiably J.J.
Fedchock identifies Johnson as the essential man in the development of jazz trombone. “He was the one person that was able to identify what was necessary to negotiate bebop, the modern angular phrasing and arpeggiated style that Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were doing,” Fedchock said yesterday by phone from his home in New York. “If it wasn’t for him, there probably wouldn’t be anybody playing modern-day trombone, a pretty archaic instrument with one moving part.”
Fedchock grew up in Highland Heights and studied with Billy Lang from age nine until he graduated from Mayfield High School. “He brought me up on the thinking that it was about making a living and what to do to be more saleable as a player,” Fedchock said.
The young trombonist learned the ropes well enough that he joined the Woody Herman Orchestra after graduating from The Ohio State University, staying seven years and becoming the band’s music director. Firmly established on the scene as a soloist, composer, arranger and clinician, he founded the Grammy-nominated John Fedchock New York Big Band, which comprises some of the city’s finest players.
To hear how well Fedchock’s honeyed tone and fleet articulation work in a small group setting, Justifiably J.J. is a fine starting point. The trombonist establishes the stakes on the opening “Naptown, U.S.A.,” a bright uptempo contrafact on “Back Home In Indiana.” Dedicated to Johnson’s hometown of Indianapolis. With its seamless thread of melody spun over the bar lines, Fedchock’s solo is a marvel of breath control and harmonic agility.
Over 58 minutes and eight Johnson compositions using the composer’s original arrangements, Fedchock makes a strong case for Johnson the composer. “[Johnson’s] sense of melody drives the harmony,” Fedchock said. “You can hear things that move from essentially early bebop, contrafact kind of music to more adventurous–at least harmonically and structurally–compositions as he grew. So, listening to an album of J.J.’s music takes you on a little history of how jazz evolved over the course of time in his lifetime.”
Despite the abundant respect with which Fedchock holds his forebear, he doesn’t sound much like Johnson. “My goal wasn’t to imitate him,” Fedchock asserted. “I didn’t want to reinvent him. It’s more like a rediscovery of his music.”
Another goal that Fedchock didn’t have in mind when he stepped on the Jazz Kitchen’s bandstand in Indy was a recording of the gig. But when the club’s engineer sent him the board recording of the gig, Fedchock said, “I took them to my engineer and we listened to everything and thought, wow, we’ve got something here. Fortunately we were able to release the album within his centennial year.”
The recording features three of Indianapolis’ finest: pianist Steve Alee, Jeremy Allen on bass and drummer Sean Dobbins. For his two northeast Ohio concerts, Fedchock will be joined by pianist Anthony Fuoco, bassist Aidan Plank and Jim Rupp on drums. “I’m really looking forward to that on these two gigs, and the fact that I’ll have the same rhythm section for both of them,” Fedchock said of his upcoming homecoming. “We should really be hitting on all cylinders.”
John Fedchock’s JJ Johnson Centennial Tribute, Fri., Oct. 11, 8 p.m., BLU Jazz+, 47 E. Market St., Akron, tickets $22 available here, and Thu., Oct. 17, 7 p.m. BOP STOP, 2920 Detroit Rd., Cleveland, tickets $20 available here
NOTE: This article was written by a real human being. No artificial intelligence or generative language models were used in its creation.
Red beans and ricely yours,
jc
