Bunk Johnson rides Again

The most historic jam session in the annals of jazz took place one hot day last week in San Francisco's Geary Theater.

Some 1,500 devotees thronged to hear it from all over northern California, from Los Angeles, even from the East. They raised the roof--but in a solid manner: they were no mere swarm of jitterbugs buzzing before the latest of the many swing band sensations. They were mostly seasoned jazz tasters who had gathered to sample vintage New Orleans music produced by a group of the Negroes who had been in that city when jazz was young.

The venerable band that played for them consisted of long-silent musicians gathered from Louisiana rice paddies and the Pullman cars. Its leader, spare as a lath, was 63 -year-old, silver-haired Willie C. ("Bunk") Johnson, onetime teacher of Louis ("Satchelmouth") Armstrong, and the greatest jazz trumpeter of his not quite bygone day. When Bunk and his old friends rode out on the classic New Orleans stomps, the San Francisco crowd knew it was getting the fragrant, free style syncopation it had come for.

For nearly 15 years Bunk Johnson had not played. His story had followed a familiar pattern among U.S. Negro musicians. In the spacious days before World War I, Bunk used to "call his people home" with his own New Orleans boys--the Original Superior Band. Louis Armstrong, who followed Bunk around, carrying his trumpet, was only one of the many Negro trumpeters and cornetists (Tommy Ladnier, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Buddy Petit, Punch Miller) who learned from Bunk. And Bunk, who could play any tune in any key without stopping to think ("sharps and flats they never bothered me"), was the greatest of them all. Bunk, they said, "had more in his haid." He had played ever since his mother had bought her kid a battered cornet. "She told me," he said later, "if I learn to play real good, she get me another, and I did learn to play real good and she did."

He Could Whistle. When the Navy closed down Storyville (New Orleans' red-light district) during World War I, Bunk Johnson left his band and toured with circuses and minstrel shows. As the years went by and the demand for New Orleans jazz died away, Bunk took other kinds of work to support his growing family. In 1933 he lost all his teeth and could not play any more even if he wanted to. "And besides," says he, "I loan my cornet to a man and he never come back." Bunk tried trucking, at $1.50 a day. He found it too strenuous and became a stoop laborer in the rice fields. "But," says he, "I always whistle. I can whistle real good."

About five years ago a Pittsburgh jazz enthusiast named William Russell heard from Louis Armstrong that Bunk Johnson was still alive somewhere in the Deep South. Once Bunk was found at his old home in New Iberia, La., he became a voluble correspondent. He slowly pecked out his careful letters on an old typewriter. Says he: "You can sit down with a cup of coffee and a cigaret and be sure you won't go to sleep because that little bell keeps waking you up." Bunk kept insisting in his letters that if he had a trumpet and a good set of teeth he could play "as good as ever." Russell took up a collection and bought Bunk a set of store teeth. Today, before Bunk eats he removes his teeth from his mouth, carefully wraps them up "to keep them nice and clean."

Last summer William Russell and some friends made a trip to New Iberia to find out whether Bunk was really as good as he said he was. They came away determined that Bunk should be heard. Finally an offer came from San Francisco, where an interior decorator named Rudolph Pickett Blesh was lecturing on hot jazz at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Blesh wanted Bunk to illustrate a lecture.

He Can Play. The Museum directors had a still more ambitious idea. They decided to surround Bunk with colleagues from the New Orleans past. They found Papa Mutt Carey, famous "dirty" trumpeter, working as a Pullman porter on the Southern Pacific. They got Kid Ory, greatest of oldtime tailgate* trombonists, from Los Angeles, where he had been raising chickens. They tracked down Clarinetist Wade Whaley at the Moore shipyards on San Francisco Bay. Ringing doorbells in San Francisco's Negro section, they finally located Bertha Gonsoulin, onetime pianist for Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. They added local Negro talent.

The morning of the concert Clarinetist Whaley disappeared and Bunk Johnson refused to get out of bed for rehearsal. But that evening Bunk Johnson and his band were terrific. Some suggested they be put on a permanent basis. But Bunk was thinking about the soft Gulf breezes and New Iberia. Said he: "This San Francisco fog just gets me all full of cold."

*On New Orleans bandwagons, the trombonist usually sat by the tailgate, where he had room to extend his slide.

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