Dick Johnson discusses his career status

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Dick Johnson discusses his choice of instrument

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Dick Johnson discusses songwriting

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Q: “Do you do much writing?”

A: Dick Johnson: “A little bit. I do some for my, you know, I do a date like that, I’ll write like a couple of original things, and I have my seven-piece band. I do most of the jazz writing. If I have some of the big band things, I don't want to spend my time copying records.”

Interviewer: “Right.”

Dick Johnson: “So I'll pay somebody to do that and then I've done a lot of the bee-bop things and I made my own original things for the band. I have another writer back home, Hal Crook, a trombone player/writer, who just moved to the Coast. He is real phenomenon and he has written a couple of things for my band and I'm not in that class of writing, but I do quite a bit of it.”