[Dixielandjazz] Johnny Smith, Obit, NYTimes + Transcription-- Walk, Don't Run

[Norman Vickers]

To:  Musicians and Jazzfans list; DJML

From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

 

This Johnny Smith obituary from NYTimes, Wednesday June 19.  It is a bit
more complete, so I hope it is not a redundancy for you.

 

Also at the end, courtesy of Dallas & Pensacola guitarist/violinist Woody
Edwards, there is a link to famous Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel's
website.  He has a transcription of Chet Atkins' version of 

Johnny Smith's famous tune, Walk, Don't Run.  

 

Thanks all.  

 




  _____  

June 18, 2013


Johnny Smith, Venerable Jazz Guitarist, Dies at 90


By PAUL VITELLO
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/v/paul_vitello/i
ndex.html> 


Johnny Smith, a jazz guitarist who was considered one of the emerging greats
of his generation when he left the limelight in 1958 to move to Colorado,
open a record store and become a full-time parent, died on June 11 at his
home in Colorado Springs. He was 90. 

His daughter, Kim Smith Stewart, confirmed his death. 

Mr. Smith was revered by guitarists for his pure tone and flawless
technique, which gave his most complex improvisations an effortless, almost
weightless quality. His dreamy rendition of
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xf3rAXoYjA> "Moonlight in Vermont,"
recorded in 1952 with a group that included Stan Getz on tenor saxophone,
was one of the best-selling jazz records of all time. 

But it was another song, the gentle, fugue-like "Walk, Don't Run," which he
wrote in 1954, that became Mr. Smith's biggest hit. While his own recording
of the piece received little attention, the Ventures had a Top 10 hit
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owq7hgzna3E>  with their instrumental rock
'n' roll version of it in 1959, and again in 1964 with the updated "Walk
Don't Run '64." 

The Ventures' stripped-down, hard-driving interpretation was a far cry from
Mr. Smith's concept. (A more faithful version
<http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xu2r7u_chet-atkins-walk-don-t-run-country-
music-experience_music>  was recorded in 1957 by his friend and fellow
guitarist Chet Atkins
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/01/obituaries/01ATKI.html> , whose recording
inspired the Ventures' effort.) But Mr. Smith didn't mind. The royalties he
received from the Ventures' cover - and from covers of the song by others,
including Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass - enabled him to quit the
punishing jazz life. 

The quitting began in 1957, when his wife, Ann Marguerite, died giving birth
to their second child, who was stillborn. Living in Manhattan, Mr. Smith
sent his daughter, Kim, to live with his mother in Colorado Springs, and for
a time returned to his work. 

With a quartet that included Mr. Getz and sometimes Zoot Sims on saxophone,
he performed regularly at the Manhattan jazz club Birdland
<http://www.birdlandjazz.com/> , and was one of New York's busiest session
musicians, working with Benny Goodman and others. 

While making several of the dozen albums under his own name that helped
establish his reputation as "a demigod of guitar technique," as The New York
Times described him in 1999, Mr. Smith recalled a blurry stretch of "71
one-nighters in a row." 

On a visit to see his daughter in Colorado Springs in 1958, he decided he
had had enough. "In the end, everything came down to the fact that I loved
my daughter too much to let my career put her at risk," he told The Colorado
Springs Independent in 2001. "But there were other factors, too. I loved New
York musically, but I hated living there." 

He bought a music store, renamed it Johnny Smith Music and settled into a
life of fatherhood, trout fishing, music tutoring and neighborly anonymity.
Asked if he ever regretted the decision, Mr. Smith told The Independent,
giving each word emphasis: "Not. One. Minute." 

John Henry Smith II was born on June 25, 1922, in Birmingham, Ala., one of
six sons of John and Kathleen Smith. His father, an accomplished banjo
player, was a sharecropper and welder who eventually moved the family to
Portland, Me., where he worked for many years at a shipyard. 

Mr. Smith picked up the guitar and other instruments, beginning at age 3,
and started playing professionally at 13. He learned to read music in an
Army Air Corps band during World War II, which helped him land a job after
the war in the orchestra of the NBC radio affiliate in Portland. 

He arrived in New York in the late 1940s, not as a jazz musician but to play
guitar and trumpet (which he had learned in the Army) in the NBC Symphony
Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini. He formed his first jazz quartet in 1951
with Mr. Getz, a fellow NBC staff musician. 

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Smith is survived by two sons from a
previous marriage, John III and David; a brother, Benjamin; three
grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. 

Mr. Smith continued to record, and sometimes performed in Colorado
nightclubs, but declined almost all invitations to tour. One exception was
for Bing Crosby, whom he accompanied on a tour of England in 1977 that ended
shortly before Mr. Crosby's death. 

"He accomplished everything he ever wanted," his daughter said. "He played
with the best musicians in the world, he went deep sea fishing in the Gulf
of Mexico, he was a great father." 

 
--End--

 

Here's the link-( it wasn't easy!)  

 

Tommymmanuel.wordpress.com/gitar-tabok/

 

Then click Chet Atkins on the superscript and then drop down to Walk, Don't
Run

 

 
--Really, the end!---