Coleman Hughes: evaluation

Transcript context

…If your name was Tyler, it would be bad, but in fact it’s totally fine. [laughter] Now, before we get to your book, I have just some random questions for you. What have you learned from J.J. Johnson? What is most interesting about J.J. Johnson is that he was an extreme perfectionist. What people don’t realize about J.J., at least people that aren’t deep connoisseurs, is that most of his solos on his records were prepared. To an extent, that is not true of his other contemporaries like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. Most of their solos were truly improvised. Like if you go to the alternate takes on those records, it’s a different solo. If you go to J.J.’s alternate takes, it’s almost the same solo. I think that, rather than be a bug, that was a feature of his success. Because if you consider the challenges required to make the trombone into a bebop instrument — which nobody thought was possible before J.J. Johnson did it — it’s a catch-22 because the level of perfectionism you would have had to have in order to be the first successful bebop trombone player would also preclude you from being a truly improvisatory musician, which is generally characteristic of jazz musicians. Are most of your trombone solos prepared?…

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