Dunn, Johnny

Dunn, Johnny, early jazz trumpeter, leader; b. Memphis, Term., Feb. 19,1897; d. Paris, France, Aug. 20, 1937. He attended Fisk Univ. in Nashville. He began working as a solo act at the Metropolitan Theatre, Memphis (1916), and then was signed by W. C. Handy and worked with Handy until 1920. During the early 1920s, he worked as an accompanist to Mamie Smith and Edith Wilson; appeared in several N.Y.,-based revues including Dixie to Broadway and the Put & Take show (1921); regularly recorded with Perry Bradford;

and played a long stint with Will Vodery’s Plantation Orch. He joined Vodery in February 1922, traveling with the band in 1923 to Europe, and continuing to work with them through the mid-1920s, while also leading his own small groups. The second half of the decade was made up of similar activities; a trip to Europe with the revue Blackbirds of 1926; several extended N.Y. engagements leading his own band; a residency in Chicago in March 1928; and a return to Paris in fall 1928 to work with Noble Sissle and bassist John Ricks’ Band. In the early 1930s, he formed his own New Yorkers Band for work in Europe, and also worked with Joe Baker’s Orch. at the Casino de Paris. For the last few years of his life, he worked mainly in Holland and Denmark (1935). He returned to Paris in 1937, and died in the American Hospital there. Dunn was one of the most influential jazz trumpeters before Armstrong. His use of the mute to produce a wa-wa effect, exemplified on “Dunn’s Cornet Blues” influenced Bubber Miley (who replaced him in Mamie Smith’s band).

Discography

Dunn’s Cornet Blues (1924); Sergeant Dunn’s Bugle Call Blues (1928); You Need Some Lovin (1928). E. Wilson: What Do You Care (1922). St. Stephen, Walbrook (destroyed in the Great Fire of

-John Chilton Who’s Who of Jazz/Lewis Porter