J.J. Johnson’s Broadway Express

Over at Jazz Wax Marc Myers has a nice write-up on the J.J. Johnson recording, Broadway Express from 1965. As Myers notes, the sessions took place in December of 65′ and involved differing personnel. Broadway Express was sort of a non-jazz date with jazz musicians, but the arrangements, by guitarist Mundell Lowe, are fantastic. Also, don’t miss Chuck Israels comments in this post (you’ll need to scroll a bit) about another of Johnson’s forays into show tune material from a few years earlier, titled J.J.’s Broadway. It featured five trombones (J.J., Urbie Green, Lou McGarrity, Dick Hixon, and Paul Faulise), plus rhythm section.

From Broadway Express, here’s Johnson performing Lowe’s arrangement of Once in a Lifetime, from Stop the World I Want to Get Off on December 13, 1965:

Gadzooks, It’s Not a Backslash

We’ve been into this World Wide Web thing for a while now. That’s right — it’s really been over 20 years, despite what certain fictional histories might lead you to believe. Despite that, you still hear many people in various forms of communication misread web addresses like this:

“Find more information at so-de-so blah-de-blah backslash something else.”

Nope — it ain’t a backslash. Take this web address:

http://www.nytimes/cooking

Those slashes above aren’t backslashes, sisters and brothers. Nope, those are forward slashes.

Why do people suffer from this misapprehension? Well, it may come from the legacy of a computer that (once-upon-a-time, when people saw it nearly every day) featured a little prompt that looked a little sumthin’ like this:

C:\>_

That prompt contained a backslash, but web addresses do not. Note that the problem became rampant enough that many web browsers actually convert back slashes to forward slashes if people try to type them in.

Over time, people have realized the error and have begun to read web addresses: “Find more information at so-de-so blah-de-blah forwardslash something else.” There’s no need to do this either. Just say “slash,” everybody.

To clear up another misapprehension, if you’ve (unfortunately) got the Facebook, you do have the internet:

It’s J.J. Johnson’s Birthday, 2018

It’s J.J. Johnson’s Birthday! This is from J.J. Inc, one of my very favorite recordings from this fantastic musician, who left us in 2001. J.J. Inc was recorded in August 1960 for Columbia Records, NYC, and released on April 10, 1961. The other personnel include Clifford Jordon, Tenor Sax, Arthur Harper, Bass, Albert Heath, Drums, Cedar Walton piano, and a young and fiery Freddie Hubbard on trumpet.

Here’s Mowhawk from the album: