Johnny Green
composer (Body and Soul)
Johnny Green was an American composer and songwriter who wrote the standard Body and Soul; his name comes up once in the videos, on Piano Jazz in 2002, just after a performance of that song.
- mentions
- 1
- recordings
- 1
- Barry speaking
- 0
What Barry says
On Piano Jazz, just after a Body and Soul that was probably Marian McPartland’s (see notes), the song is called a strong one and John or Johnny Green is named as its writer; ‘he’, probably Coleman Hawkins, is then said to have made it something nobody will forget. Who says this is unclear.
Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland29:16
When Barry talks about Body and Soul in the Artists House interview, he talks about Coleman Hawkins’s recording and does not name the composer. He dates jazz’s golden age from Hawkins’s return from Europe and his Body and Soul, which he calls the greatest recording anyone ever made, and is amazed that so abstract a piece became a hit.
Every mention
1 moments in the recordings, 0 of them Barry speaking. Each says who is talking.
Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland
- 29:16
Speaker unclear
After a Body and Soul on Piano Jazz, ‘John Green ... Johnny Green’ is named as its writer.
In the interviews and notes
Rees finds Body and Soul well suited to Barry’s approach: he harmonises its first bar in contrary motion on the D major 6 diminished scale, voices minor sevenths as sixth chords with the same notes, and uses a related dominant. His credit line names John Green as composer.
The workbook to Barry’s first workshop video lists Body and Soul by Green in its chapter on moveable chords for piano and guitar, right after Alone Together and the pages on the C6 and C minor 6 diminished scales.
Barry Harris (on video); Howard Rees (producer, The Barry Harris Workshop Video ¶19
De Lima uses Coleman Hawkins’s 1939 recording of the Johnny Green standard to argue that Hawkins prepared the ground for bebop: Hawkins only hints at the melody, improvises on the changes from the start, and uses tritone substitutions in the opening.
Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶1328Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶1329
García-Valdecasas reproduces a Body and Soul example from Rees’s books to show Barry’s use of the 6th diminished scale on a standard.
Guillermo García-Valdecasas Vaticón (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid), The Barry Harris harmonic theory in Chopin’s work ¶93Guillermo García-Valdecasas Vaticón (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid), The Barry Harris harmonic theory in Chopin’s work ¶94
Method ideas nearby
Ideas of the method taught in the classes where they come up, with how many mentions fall in each.