Johnny Smith

Johnny Henry Smith II was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on June 25, 1922. His family relocated to Portland, Maine, when he was five years old. Smith became fascinated with the guitar and taught himself to play by practicing in pawnshops that allowed him to use their instruments in exchange for keeping them in tune. His early influences were Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian, whose solos he learned from recordings. By age 13, Smith was already teaching others. In his early teens, he turned professional, performing with Uncle Lem and the Mountain Boys, a local hillbilly band traveling throughout Maine. During World War II, Smith joined the Army band after intensive study of music theory and the cornet, eventually earning the lead trumpet position due to poor vision in his left eye preventing Army Air Corps enlistment.

After leaving the military in 1947, Smith relocated to New York City. He became a staff guitarist for the NBC radio and television orchestra under conductor Arturo Toscanini from 1946 to 1951. Smith also performed complex compositions by Arnold Schoenberg under conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos with the New York Philharmonic and appeared regularly at the Birdland jazz nightclub. His playing was characterized by closed-position chord voicings and rapidly ascending lines reminiscent of Django Reinhardt, though more diatonic. Smith famously did not consider himself a jazz musician, instead viewing his work as encompassing multiple musical genres with equal dedication.

Smith’s breakthrough came in March 1952 with his first recording as a leader: “Moonlight in Vermont,” featuring tenor saxophonist Stan Getz on Royal Roost Records. The single became the second most popular jazz record in DownBeat’s readers’ poll for 1952. This success led to a long-term contract with Roost Records, during which he produced approximately 20 albums, most featuring solo guitar or trio arrangements. The Man With The Blue Guitar (1962) became one of the most transcribed recordings in jazz guitar history. The Sound Of The Johnny Smith Guitar (1961) and string orchestra albums with his own arrangements followed. By 1954, Smith had reached the apex of New York’s jazz scene, winning both the Metronome and Down Beat readers’ polls for guitarist of the year. He performed extended engagements at Birdland and the Embers and accompanied singers including Beverly Kenney and Jeri Southern.

At the height of his career in 1958, Smith made a profound personal decision to leave New York following the death of his second wife, Ann Westerstrom, during childbirth. He relocated to Colorado Springs to raise his four-year-old daughter with family support. In Colorado, Smith opened a music store and founded a teaching practice while continuing to perform and record sporadically. In 1955, he designed a guitar in collaboration with Guild founder Alfred Dronge, becoming Guild’s first signature artist with the Johnny Smith Award. Ted McCarty of Gibson visited Smith in Colorado in 1961 to develop the Gibson Johnny Smith model, which set new standards in archtop guitar design and featured innovations Smith had conceived. His composition “Walk, Don’t Run” (1954) became an unexpected commercial phenomenon when the Ventures recorded a pop arrangement in 1960, reaching number two on the Billboard charts. Smith recorded three albums for Verve Records: Johnny Smith (1967), Johnny Smith’s Kaleidoscope (1968), and Phase II (1968). In 1984, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1998, the Smithsonian Institution awarded him the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal for his jazz contributions. Bill Frisell studied with Smith in the 1970s. Smith died on June 11, 2013, at his home in Colorado Springs from complications of a fall, at age 90.