Biography

Active throughout the 1920s and '30s, the sophisticated and influential musician James P. Johnson synthesized many strands of black music--ragtime, blues, popular and sacred song--with his own original stride piano style. Though his young protege Fats Waller went on to popularize stride, Johnson was the masterly father of the style. The majority of his more ambitious works for symphony orchestra have been lost to history, due to the complete lack of respect shown black composers by the classical music world at the time.

Top Tracks

• Click on the track to launch in Spotify

• At The Ball

• Backwater Blues

• Blueberry Rhyme

• Blues At Blue Note

• Carolina Shout

• Charleston (south Carolina)

• Creole Lullaby (peephole Blues)

• Daintiness Rag

• Dinah

• Doctor Jazzes Raz-ma-taz

• Euphonic Sounds

• Froggy Moore

• Gut Stomp

• Harlem Hotcha

• Harlem Strut

• Harlem Woogie

• Havin' A Ball

• Hesitation Blues

• How Could I Be Blue?

• Hungry Blues

• If Dreams Come True

• I'm Gonna Sit Right Down (and Write Myself A Letter)

• Improvisations On Pinetop's Boogie Woogie

• I've Found A New Baby

• Jungle Drums

• Keep Off The Grass

• Liza (all The Clouds'll Roll Away)

• Lorenzo's Blues (morning After Blues)

• Love Nest

• Mama And Papa Blues

• Memphis Blues

• Mournful Tho'ts

• Over The Bars

• Salee Dame

• Snowy Morning Blues

• Sweet Lorraine

• The Boogie Dream

• The Call Of The Blues

• The Dream

• The Dream (slow Drag)

• The Harlem Strut

• Tishomingo Blues

• Victory Stride

• What's The Use Of Being Alone?

• When It's Cherry Time In Tokyo

• You've Got To Be Modernistic

Discography

• Click on the album to launch in Spotify

• The Gods Are in the House

  Avid

  2002

• Backwater Blues

  Riverside Records

  1955

• Early Harlem Piano, Vol. 2

  Riverside Records

  1954

• Rent Party

  Riverside Records

  1953

• Stomps, Rags and Blues

  Blue Note

  1951

• James P. Johnson Plays Fats Waller Favorites

  Decca

  1950

• The Daddy of the Piano

  Decca

  1950