(April 12, 1892 – August 8, 1940)
AKA
"Toilet"!
Johnny Dodds was born into a musical family in Waveland, Mississippi. His father and uncle were violinists, his sister played a melodeon. The legend tells that his instrumental skill began with a toy flute which had been purchased for his brother, Warren "Baby" Dodds, who would go on to become a pioneering jazz drummer.
Johnny Dodds moved to New Orleans at a young age and had the chance to study the clarinet with Lorenzo Tio a member of the great Tio clarinet dynasty that shaped the great players of New Orleans. Dodds moved to Chicago to play with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.
Johnny Dodds is best known for his recordings with Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven groups, as well as Jelly Roll Morton's band The Red Hot Peppers. His own band Johnny Dodds' Black Bottom Stompers recorded many times, and he became a big star on the Chicago jazz scene of the 1920s, but along with his friend King Oliver, his career hit the rocks when the Great Depression forced people to make cut backs in their spending.
Johnny Dodds was a true virtuoso of the clarinet who also felt a deep connection to The Blues (causing others to confer upon him the nickname of "toilet.")
Dodds had a huge sound on his instrument - throughout his life he played with the double embouchure taught to him by Lorenzo Tio. The double embouchure was combined with a very hard reed to create the potential for an enourmous full-bodied sound when playing The Blues. His embouchure techniques influenced Benny Goodman and other later clarinettists, and filtered through to pioneering saxophone players such as Johnny Hodges, Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster,
Dodds was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1987.
