Dick Johnson discusses his career status

Listen Now Add to Play List Read Transcript (File Size: 0.56MB)

Dick Johnson discusses his choice of instrument

Listen Now Add to Play List Read Transcript (File Size: 0.12MB)

Dick Johnson discusses songwriting

Listen Now Add to Play List Read Transcript (File Size: 0.25MB)

If you are experiencing problems playing audio on this site,
please update to the latest version of Flash.

Transcription

Q: “Hearing somebody like you, who is a mature musician, who’s got it all together, who’s obviously got the experience; and still the joy of playing that I hear! It’s very rewarding to hear somebody like you whom we haven’t heard before really and sort of for what it seems like is the other end of a record from your contribution, we just sit back and listen and as though out of nowhere comes a real giant! I think you’re a wonderful player and I’m sort of disappointed that we haven’t had a chance to hear of you before…”

A: Dick Johnson: “I think it's kind of nice to have it happen now. I've talked about a lot because naturally this conversation has come up at different times and you know, I answer the people back home, "Well, it's about time. It's about time." You can hear that, which you know, I never get sick of hearing it because it's ... but I was sort of a late starter playing. I was one of those kids that, well, my mother was a piano player and I took piano from age five to seven. Very disenchanted. Hey but I'm glad I had it because I know the keyboard pretty well. But then I got interested in the tail end of, well, the big band era and I bought a clarinet and I wanted to play like Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman next week, you know, and I found out this didn't ...”

Interviewer: “Doesn't quite work that way.”

Dick Johnson: “Doesn't quite work that way, so I was pretty lazy and I didn't follow it up. The clarinet went up in the shelf and then I went to service, in the Navy and I wasn't too happy about that situation. I wanted to find something to take up my time with the time that I did have, so there was some instruments on the ship and a couple of guys that in typical service style should have been in the bands and they got ... one was in radar and one was in something. Real great players that had been ... one of them had been with Tommy Dorsey and they put him in radar. You know, I mean, he played really great. So these two saxophone players took me in and I ended up all my time off, you know, practicing four hours a day on the 2-1/2 years that I was overseas, about eighteen months, and I was putting a good four hours a day and then playing.”