Johnny Hodges - Biography
By Stuart Kremsky
Possessor one of the most recognizable and beautiful saxophone tones in all of jazz, the immortal alto master Johnny Hodges spent the bulk of his career as a mainstay of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Hodges’ artistry was much loved by other instrumentalists. Charlie Parker described him as “the Lily Pons of his instrument.” Trombonist Julian Priester, who was with the Ellington band briefly in the late Sixties, noted simply that Hodges’ “style epitomized his genius - never forced or hurried.”
John Cornelius Hodges was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 25, 1907. His family later moved to Boston. As a child, Hodges played both piano and drums before taking up the soprano saxophone as a young teenager, “because it looked so pretty” as he later said. His main influences were records featuring trumpet master Louis Armstrong and New Orleans saxophonist Sidney Bechet. The largely self-taught Hodges described his style to Stanley Dance by saying “I just put both of them together and used a little of what I thought of as new.”
By the time he was out of his teens, Hodges had distinguished himself around Boston playing soprano with the bands of Bobby Sawyer and pianist Walter Johnson. Hodges soon began playing the more popular alto saxophone, and started to make regular visits to New York to play in after hours sessions. He was working in a small Harlem club in the early Twenties when he re-encountered Bechet, whom he’d previously met briefly. Bechet invited the younger man to join him at his new club, where they played duets. When Bechet left for Europe in September 1925, Hodges retreated to Boston for a while, only to return to the Big Apple in 1926. At the end of the year, Hodges was working in a small group with drummer Chick Webb, then beginning his career as a bandleader. By 1928, with the Webb group facing an uphill climb to popularity, Hodges left to join the Duke Ellington orchestra. Ellington’s awareness of Hodges’ skills on both alto and soprano saxophones led him to feature his new musician on his very first recording session with the band on June 25, 1928.
This Brunswick date marked the start of what Dance has called one of “the most vital and fruitful associations of jazz history.” Except for a period between early 1951 and the fall of 1955, when Hodges led his own groups, he remained a member of the Ellington organization until his death in 1970. In his first decade with the orchestra, Hodges was heard on both alto and soprano saxophones. By 1940, though, he claimed that the double duty was too much responsibility, and he gave up the smaller horn for good. He last played soprano on “That’s the Blues, Old Man,” recorded during one of Hodges’ small group sessions with musicians from the Ellington band. As a way to keep his musicians working, and as a kind of workshop for the larger ensemble, beginning in 1936, Ellington organized sessions nominally fronted by some of his best-known sidemen. One of Hodges’ early hits was “Jeep’s Blues,” recorded at his third small group session in March, 1938.
In his early days with Ellington, Hodges became known for his hot, up-tempo choruses. Around 1940, when Ellington was writing individualized pieces to showcase his stars, he fashioned “Warm Valley” for Hodges. The sultry exoticism of the theme and Hodges’ sensuous approach to the song gained him a whole new reputation as a sweet-toned and lyrical player. Dance remarks that “what was really being demonstrated was his versatility, for the blues and the swinging continued as strongly as ever.” His many featured recordings over the years include such classics as “In a Sentimental Mood” (1935), “The Jeep Is Jumpin’” (1938), “Things Ain't What They Used to Be” (1941), “Passion Flower” (1941), “Mood To Be Wooed” (1944), “Isfahan” (1963), and many others. (“Jeep” was one of Hodges’s nicknames, along with “Rabbit,” from his predilection for lettuce and tomato sandwiches.)
Hodges remained true to Ellington through the difficult war years, turning down offers from other bandleaders. By 1951, though, encouraged by Norman Granz at Clef Records, he was ready to start a band of his own. With tenor saxophonist Al Sears as the new group’s manager, the septet in its early days featured ex-Ellingtonians Lawrence Brown on trombone and Sonny Greer on drums. Under some pressure to come up with a hit, the band scored with Sears’ R’n’B-flavored “Castle Rock” in 1951. Sears left the band in 1952, replaced on recordings by Flip Phillips and Ben Webster. Although Hodges remained a strong attraction on the nightclub circuit, the responsibilities of leadership were not to his liking. The naturally laconic Hodges summed it up to Dance by saying “Too many headaches.” Following a typically Dukish session in September 1955 featuring Brown, Greer, trumpeter Clark Terry, Billy Strayhorn on piano and Harry Carney on baritone, Hodges returned to the Ellington fold. The fortunes of the Ellington orchestra, which had been at a low ebb in the early part of the decade, began to improve. Their triumphant performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, and a subsequent album release of the event on Columbia, began what amounted to a new era for the band.
A star soloist once again in an orchestra acclaimed around the globe, Hodges was featured extensively on Ellington’s releases in the late Fifties and the Sixties, including soundtracks for Anatomy of a Murder (1959 - Columbia) and Paris Blues (1961 - United Artists), ...And His Mother Called Him Bill (1968 - RCA), and many others.
Not long after his return to the Duke’s group, Hodges began to record as a leader on Verve Records, working regularly for the label until the end of 1968. He was featured in a variety of contexts, including small groups, big bands, and organ combos. Appearing on record with him were such jazz notables as Webster, Strayhorn, baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, pianist Jimmy Rowles, bassist Ray Brown, drummers Sam Woodyard and Jo Jones. There was also a pair of sessions co-led with Ellington, Side By Side (1958 - Verve) and Back To Back (1959 - Verve).
Hodges’ health began to decline during the Sixties. In the spring of 1970, the Ellington band was in the midst of recording sessions for The New Orleans Suite (1970 - Atlantic). Duke was trying to figure out how to get Hodges to pick up his soprano sax for first time in years to play a tribute to his old mentor, Sidney Bechet, when the call came that the saxophonist had collapsed at his dentist’s office and died on May 11, 1970. As Ellington wrote that night, “Never the world's most highly animated showman or greatest stage personality, but a tone so beautiful it sometimes brought tears to the eyes - this was Johnny Hodges. This is Johnny Hodges. Because of this great loss, our band will never sound the same.”
Much of Hodges’ voluminous recorded output has been issued on countless individual albums as weel as a series of boxed sets on RCA devoted to the collected works of Ellington and on Mosaic, which has issued Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936-1940 Variety, Vocalion and OKeh Small Group Sessions (2006), The Complete Johnny Hodges Sessions 1951-1955 (1989), and The Complete Verve Johnny Hodges Small Group Sessions 1956-1961 (2000).
