CD Review: The Music of Francis Johnson & His Contemporaries: Early 19th-Century Black Composers

I recognized the name Francis Johnson (1792-1844) as the composer of various pieces of early-nineteenth-century American music found in library collections here and there, but I had not actually sought out his work specifically until this winter, after my dinner companion at a ball in Gettysburg in November told me a bit about his history as a famous African-American composer and bandleader who played for, among other things, society balls in Philadelphia and the summer resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York.  Since I'm always interested in dance music of this era, I picked up the CD The Music of Francis Johnson& His Contemporaries: Early 19th-Century Black Composers to see what I thought of his music.

From a dancer's perspective, it turned out to be a spectacularly good purchase.  The sound is beautiful, and almost every track on it is useful for dancing.  It's especially valuable for those willing to do a little work with music editing software.

First, about that sound: Johnson was the leader of a brass band which played for various military regiments along with for balls.  Brass instruments of the early nineteenth century were quite different from those of today, so this does not, thankfully, sound like a modern brass band that ought to be playing Sousa.  The instruments are softer and the sound more mellow and less "brassy".  The band for this recording is The Chestnut Brass Company (and friends), and the different tracks are played by various larger and smaller subsets of the group entirely on either actual period instruments or on modern reproductions.  While these do not seem to be regular dance musicians, they do a very good job at playing at a steady tempo and, for the most part, without the oddities of tempo and rhythm that make things difficult for dancers.

There seems to be some urban legend that has grown up around Johnson.  He is supposed to have been born in the Caribbean, but the very extensive online exhibit of the major collection of Johnson material at the University of Pennsylvania includes his Philadelphia baptismal record.  He is known to have traveled with his band to England in 1837-1838, from whence he imported to America the "promenade concert" format, but it's not clear whether he actually played for the newly-crowned Queen Victoria or whether she actually gave him a silver bugle.  But his documented accomplishments include dozens if not hundreds of pieces of music composed and/or arranged and being a famous touring bandleader in an age when that was not an easy thing for an African-American to be.  Some of the tunes on the CD are associated with the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to America in 1824, during which Johnson played for a ball in his honor.

Johnson died in 1844, just as the polka craze was beginning, but since the album also includes compositions by some of his contemporaries (band members, fellow composers, and rivals), the selection of dances includes those of the years immediately following his death as well.

The specific tracks include:

• Two polkas, "Phoenix" and "Evergreen".  The former features a fire company alarm bell, which is a beautiful effect typical of Johnson's band.

• Two five-step waltzes, not the popular Nolff composition but other pieces entirely.  Recordings of other five-step waltzes are vanishingly rare, so these are very useful.  The whole CD would be worth it for these two tracks alone.

• Four waltzes, "Croton", "Mallet", "New Bird", and "Monongahela".  "Croton" is played like a dirge and is too slow to be usable without some adjustment of tempo, but the other three are great.  

• A 2/4-time hop (sauteuse) waltz, "Philadelphia Hop Waltz".  I think this specific track has been floating around the dance community for a long time; I'm sure I've heard it before, but not known its origin.

• Two galops, "Princeton" and "Victoria", rather gentle in tempo as galops go, which is actually a pleasant change from the hyper-fast ones I already have.

• Eight marches and quicksteps.  Five of them could be looped to make good recordings for grand marches.  Two  ("Davis' Quickstep" and "Philadelphia Gray's Quickstep") are usable as galops, though "Philadelphia Gray's" would need some editing to take out awkward pauses.  One ("Boone Infantry Brass Band Quickstep") makes a dandy schottische.

• A single quadrille tune, two cotillion tunes, and a bunch of "new cotillon" or country dance tunes which might be for either cotillion or quadrille figures (the terms were regularly mixed up in early nineteenth-century America) or even used as country dances.  Two are jigs, "Cadmus" and "Recollections of Buffalo", though "Cadmus" is too slow to attract me as a dancer.  One ("Monmouth") feels like it would also make a good schottische.  All the others would be quite reasonable as country dance, quadrille, or cotillion tunes. 

• One final track is "Dirge", which is, unsurprisingly, dirge-like and not danceable.  But having all but a few of the thirty-two tracks is a very impressive record for an album which was created as concert music rather than specifically for dancing!

Of particular note is that while all the set-dance tracks are played only once through, the endings are generally clean and the tracks would be very easy to loop into enough repetitions to use for dancing.  The same applies to all the tunes -- even the longer pieces have the clean breaks between sections that make editing simple.  I suspect this is a function of the nature of the instruments in a brass band, but whatever it may be, it's very helpful to me!

The tune "Philadelphia Fireman's Cotillion" is especially interesting.  It is a "voice quadrille", during which the band sang for part of the time.  Apparently this was a specialty of Johnson's.  In this recording, there is a vocal section shouting "fire fire fire fire!", which makes me wonder if there is some connection between Johnson and the later "Fireman's Dance" contra dance.

I highly recommend this CD both for listening and for dancing.  It is quite old (1988 or 1990) but is not particularly difficult to obtain.  You can get it from Amazon at the link below or at many other locations.