Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Johnny Dunn was born on February 19, 1897 in Memphis, Tennessee and learned to play trumpet as a youth. He attended Fisk University in Nashville and had a solo act in Memphis before he was discovered by W.C. Handy and traveling to New York with him in 1917. After a three-year association featured playing cornet, Johnny joined Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds, recording with her band before leaving a year later to lead his Original Jazz Hounds.

During the 1920s he ventured to Europe with the Will Vodery band, recorded with Noble Sissle in France, played and recorded with Willie “The Lion’ Smith and memorable sessions with Jelly Roll Morton in New York, had a hit song “Sergeant Dunn’s Bugle Call Blues”.

By the 30s Dunn was working steadily in Europe and often residing there for periods of time in the Netherlands. He was among the best of the musicians playing in the immediate pre-jazz years and he influenced many of his contemporaries. Overshadowed though he was by the arrival of Louis Armstrong, Dunn was still an able and gifted player, showing subtle power and using complex patterns that never descended into mere showmanship.

His stylistic roots became outmoded during the 30s but his decision to remain in Europe and his early death on August 20, 1937, in Paris, meant that his reputation never suffered and is recognized as having been a highly accomplished trumpeter.

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