Johnny Parker (jazz trumpeter)

Johnny Parker (circa 1928 - March 21, 2006), also called John "Tasty" Parker was a jazz musician who played trumpet.

Parker was a New York City native, born in Queens. He attended Flushing High School and began playing trumpet at age 16. Bass player George Duvivier encouraged Parker to pursue music, and by his later teens, he had begun to play the jazz clubs of West 52nd Street. At this point, drummer Zutty Singleton nicknamed Parker "Tasty" for the quality of his solos.

His career accomplishments in the 1950s and 1960s included touring and recording with Roosevelt Sykes' R&B band in the 1950s, and hiring Sonny Greer and Thelonius Monk for $12 an hour for a gig at a club in Queens, Big George's. He performed with Billie Holiday in a club called Snooky's on West 45th Street in Manhattan. He also performed and recorded with Etta Jones, Sy Oliver, and Arnold "Gatemouth" Moore.

One of his more fortunate jobs was temporarily replacing an ill Cat Anderson in Duke Ellington's band. Parker was walking down Eighth Avenue, more broke than usual, when a friend spotted him and walked him to Ellington's tour bus; Anderson had gotten sick and Ellington needed a replacement starting immediately.

As with many jazz musicians of the era, he had a great deal of difficulty making enough money to survive. As an African American, Parker was unlikely to be hired by Broadway theater orchestras, and he could not break into the small group of musicians who got recording studio work. He abstained from intravenous drugs and this excluded him from some musical circles.

Along with many others, he lived in cheap ($15 per week) midtown Manhattan hotels near Times Square and cheap apartment on the Lower East Side or Harlem or the outer boroughs, and subsisted on various small music gigs, the occasional prestigious or steady work (such the Ellington job) and a succession of irregular or occasional jobs. Parker once cleaned up after an elephant, and sometimes worked backstage at a theater. At one point he managed a tap dancer. He sometimes worked as a music copyist; at this time printing and reproduction were expensive, so performers often used hand-copied sheet music. When money became scarce, he would pay his rent by pawning his trumpet for $20; he also sometimes rented it to other musicians, although sometimes it was loaned without charge.

One night, while visiting John Shaw, a mutual friend, Carmen McRae telephoned and asked him "Do you think I'll ever make it?". Parker advised "Sure you will, you'll be all right".

In the 1970s he performed in various Manhattan venues including the Algonquin Hotel with Sonny Greer (drums) and Brooks Kerr (piano).

From the middle 1980s until her death in 2004, Johnny Parker lived at the Westbeth Artists Community on Bethune Street in Manhattan, with his wife, Leslie Gourse, a writer who specialized in books about jazz musicians. He played various clubs, including appearances at Chelsea Place (including headlining the 1994 reopening), and had a regular booking several nights a week at Arthur's Tavern on Grove Street as a "strolling musician" almost until his death. He appeared with Harry Connick Jr. at the Algonquin Hotel, and with Teri Thornton in the house band at the Casa Bella restaurant in Little Italy.

According to his obituary in The Villager, he had two children, John Lomacang (a gospel musician and Seventh-day Adventist pastor) and Vivian Lomacang.

Johnny Parker died of emphysema and was cremated at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Recordings

* Arthur Godfrey Show. March 6, 1960. Program #804 This is a different Johnny Parker
* "Shining Star" video for Mesa/Blue Moon productions, aired on Black Entertainment Television

References

*"The Golden Age of Jazz in Paris and Other Stories About Jazz" [http://www2.xlibris.com/Bookstore/book_excerpt.asp?bookid=1759] by Leslie Gourse, chapter 3.
*"Carmen McRae: Miss Jazz" by Leslie Gourse, Billboard Books, 1981, page 32. ISBN 082307904X
* [http://www.thevillager.com/villager_152/johnnyparker78.html Johnny Parker, played trumpet with jazz greats] , obituary from The Villager, Volume 75, Issue 45, March 29, 2006
* [http://www.arthurstavernnyc.com/wednesday/index.html Bio] at Arthur's Tavern website.