Jenni Johnson: Jazz Johnson Extraordinaire

By Joyce Swan Keeler

Born in NYC and educated at UVM, Jenni Johnson has added her own special brand of funk and spice to the Burlington jazz scene, starting in the late 60’s and early 70’s. She returned to Vermont in the late 80’s. Jenny is a therapist of college students and has her own jazz band and an exercise business.

Joyce: Let’s start at the beginning. I would like to know about your early childhood: Family influences, favorite songs, what childhood was like…

Jeni: No songs influenced me, artists influenced; I don’t have a favorite color, never have. The music that was played around the house influenced me. Artists like Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Nancy Wilson, Nina Simone. Dinah Washington stayed on my mind because she died tragically at a young age and we lost her talent. Also, Aretha Franklin and the Supremes were influences. I liked B.B. King. As I became more independent, I was exposed to many kinds of music and had more of a chance to hear all kinds of music live like Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson, and the Temptations at the Apollo. They booed people on Amateur Night, and if you were not any good you got the hook that would come out and grab you off stage. I was not inclined with that too much because of my age, but when we were allowed to go to the Apollo we went to some of the shows. I actually only went to some of the shows. I actually only went to the Apollo two or three times and would not go back anymore because I was only 5 years old and a very short child; at the end of each show at the Apollo, if you were brave enough you could try to go backstage to wait for the stars to come out. Well, I remember vividly almost being trampled to death and that pretty much resolved my excitement about going to different concerts. But growing up in the city, I think, is one of the greatest experiences a person can have in terms of being exposed to various kinds of music. Growing up in the city and seeing black people on TV and then going to see them in concert was something that made you feel wonderful if you were growing up poor; You felt good about it. I started singing at the age of 11 or 12 in public. Privately, I hummed music around the house and my uncle was in a group back in Harlem. I sang some gospel and visited many different churches, the Lutheran, Protestant and A.M.E. Baptist churches. I liked Joni Mitchell’s music. Roberta Flack, Phoebe Snow. Stevie Wonder has techniques that vocalists can pick up on.

Joyce: How do you choose and develop your musicians?

Jenni: I have a strange reputation in Vermont because I have hired so many musicians. I try to hire musicians who have a fresh outlook similar to the sound I want. Basically, the sound I wasn’t is a soulful sound. If you are going to play you should be expected to muster up as much soul and energy and passion, to become one with the instrument and let it tell you what it wants to do. The instrument should become an extension of you, That is what I do with my voice. I guess the frustrating part is a lot of the musicians that I work with, for the kind of music that I do, they would prefer to do it as it is written, and musicians are learning that they will never know what will come out of my mouth but it will be on key. It will be familiar to what you are accustomed to hearing, but it has a personal touch and that is what one needs to strive for if you are going to call yourself a musician. What happens is that when I get a gig I try to find out as much as I can about who I am playing for, so that when I hire the musicians I know what kind of mind-set they need to be in. If it is a gig that is part of the Vermont touting program, and it is in a school system, then I need to hire musicians who I know are comfortable working with kids. 

Joyce: Tell me about that. What do you do with the kids?

Jenni: A lot depends on what the school wants. I will give you an example. Richmond Elementary School hired us for February and they wanted us to work with kids from K-4. They had 400 kids, a very limited bidet and they also wanted a concert. So, what I had to do is find out exactly what the grades were, what the breakdown was. What we devise for the kids of that age is to take a nursery rhyme that they are all familiar with and help them change the rhythms of it and turn it unto more of a jazzy kind of things or more of a blues kind of riff, or if need by, even a rock and roll riff. For example, “Old MacDonald Had A Farm.” After you introduce yourself to the kids, you say ‘Okay, we all know ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’ it goes like this.’ Then you sing it the way the nursery rhyme goes. Then you say, ‘Well, how about this, how about if you do a little funk.’ (Jeni Demonstrates.) And then you and your musicians play around with that. Once you lay that down you ask the kids how many want to be in the chorus and how many want to be musicians. Depending upon how many kids I have working with me, I will have the saxophone player work with the percussion section, the keyboard player with the chorus, and then if there are any kids left over we choreograph a little dance with them. Then we taught them a simple song, James Brown’s “I Feel Good.” We used their instruments: cymbals, triangles, rhythm blocks, sand blocks. We split into groups. Everyone rehearses for 20 minutes in their groups, then we all get together to rehearse for another 20 minutes and then they perform their song.

At the college level I am hired as a touring artist just to perform a concert and some request that we do predominantly blues, jazz or a combination of both. Most of my musicians are very familiar with the jazz standards which is one of my favorite mediums, but I am finding now that some of the school systems are exposing their kids to more than just jazz and blues. It depends on what they want us for. So, that’s the touring stuff.

Joyce: I am concerned about the ghetto music that I hear from our black kids. What bothers me is that our music from the 1960’s was created to uplift us and get us through. There is a lot more anger that seems like defeat and rage in the music of black kids these days. This makes me think racism is beginning to get to them in ways it did not get to us, because we either do not allow it or were protected from it. I am also concerned that they feel the need to remix old standard songs instead of creating fresh music. 

Jenni: That is an interesting point because this is the 90’s and rap is here to stay. In the 1980’s when rap started really coming out it was a statement from the young kids about how angry they were with society. The only saving grace is that there would be more teenagers dead if they did not have the outlet of this music. Even though the songs are violent, it is better than pulling out a gun and shooting each other. There have been a small percent of inner city kids who have been able to find someone who allows them to express their anger through the art form of music. But they have seen that their way maybe was not getting the word out to enough people because they were just expressing anger. So, someone got smart and said, ‘Hey listen. We have such a richness of our music from the late 1950’s, predominantly the 60’s and part of the 70’s and now these kids are diving back into history and remixing stuff from the Temptations and intertwining it with the rap and the rap us not as angry as it was a few years ago. It has calmed down.  

Joyce:  You seem to successfully incorporate your music, your exercise business and your business as a therapist for college students. 

Jenni: Seamless–one affects the other. I am the kind of person that knows through direct experience. I Was born in Harlem and around a lot of violence and drugs and sadness, but I was able to physically get myself out of that. I have no regrets about my childhood, but it was very violent because that was city life back then. So, I maintain that passion for life because of some of the experiences I have been through and because I have this gift to sing–that’s how music works for me. I also have the gift to want to help individuals who only see things one dimensionally. I see things at different levels and different dimensions and I like to share that with people and that is where my counseling and my therapy comes into play. And then the exercise business is something that I have total control over. There is very little that we have total control over in our lives, and I do have total control over my body as much as I can. Exercise makes you feel good, and I have found the level of exercise that makes me feel good, and I have been able to share that with other people. 

I still can’t answer the question why I have not given up or why I am not butter. The only thing I can answer is bitterness does not get you anywhere. You moan and groan, it doesn't change the situation. Who can change it? You. And if you don't. Then you really can’t fault anyone. You really can’t. If you have any control over whether you can turn that nozzle on or off, then you had better turn it the way that it is going to suit you. So any control I have over my situation, I am going to use it. I had a decision to make. I could either be absorbed and succumb to inner city life, which is what happened to most of my friends and family or I could take a chance. I took a chance because I knew the chance I was taking was not going to be detrimental to me. I was going to be unfamiliar, but not detrimental. Just because it is unfamiliar doesn’t mean that it is not food, If you know that it is not going to injure you mentally or physically, but is unfamiliar–go for it. And I knew what I had in the city, I knew what was there and that it was not going anywhere, and that I could stay there, I was given opportunities to leave the city. 

Joyce: Was UVM your first opportunity or were their others?

Jenni: No, the first opportunity to leave the city was when my mother was still alive. We were Fresh Air Fund children. We were the little inner city negroes at that time. The first year my brothers and I were housed with a family in upstate New York, because we were too young to be in camp. It was a pretty traumatic experience benign with these unfamiliar people, but it was a learning experience–it was like, oh, wow, there are trees! When you grow up in the city and see a tree, it is not that kind of tree that you see when you go to the suburbs. If you grow up in the inner city you do not appreciate a green tree or the green grass because there is not much of it. 95% of your surroundings are concrete and tar. Only that 5% is a tre but even there it’s in a shopping mall, so you don’t notice the trees. Although it was in upper New York state it was like being in another country, because there weren't any buildings. 

Joyce: As a child, did you deal with the racism the same as you do now?

Jenni: Racism now is uglier and the way I deal with it is much uglier. Uglier now because it hurts more now because you think that it shouldn't even exist. You think this virus should have been killed off like tuberculosis. They thought they had a handle on racism, well, it’s back. And so it's uglier and I’m uglier. As a child if you called me a name I was going to call you another name. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm me…” that was the rule we grew up with. You know as kids we were calling each other all kinds of “black this” and “black that” and “you spic this” and “Yo mama,” “Whose mama?” Now you say “Yo Mama '' and I am going to have to cut you because it is so ugly, So, yeah, everything is so ugly now, just ugly. 

Joyce: So, when did you decide to come to UVM?

Jenni: I was part of a program called New York City Vermont Youth program. I had just graduated from high school and one of my mentors, this white woman, contacted me. I had a lot of passion for school because my home life was so violent and so miserable. Because I lost my mother at a young age and remained growing up in the city, everything was so negative for me at home that I used school as a haven, so I embraced every opportunity to do something different. I was told about this experiment they were doing in some place called Vermont and they needed some inner city kids and they needed some black and Hispanic kids, and I was chosen as one of them. All I knew was that it was a chance to get out of the city and to try something different, and I took the chance. 

Joyce: Tell me about the music scene here when you came here and how it has evolved to what it is like today?

Jenni: I think Vermont has a lot to offer. Vermont is an amazing state. There are so many musicians around here, it is incredible. There are some fine, fine musicians, and here are some people who just have no business playing out in public, but, who am I to say that. And I think Vermont lends itself to that in that if you have enough gall, do it, and I think the opportunities a person can have here, regardless of your color are endless as long as you are willing to put some energy into it. My music career here got started inadvertently. I was just kind of jamming with a whole bunch of musicians. There aren’t that many female vocalists, not just in the state of Vermont but in the female jazz/ blues singer, not the rock and roll, not the rap singers, but there are not that many female jazz and blues singers in the industry of music anyway. Look at the spectrum of music. It is still male dominated like society is. So, Vermont was a place that just happened to happen for me. I did singing in New York, but never thought about doing anything up here, but it just kind of happened. It happens, but because it is a state that is not overly populated I am developing a good following because they also like the kind of music I am putting out which is different from a lot of bands. And the young kids, and when I say young, I am talking about the kids who are in their twenties, are starting to appreciate these jazz standards that remain here. I think Burlington, on the music scene, is ever increasing. It just continues to evolve. The possibilities continue. There are possibilities in Burlington. 

Joyce: And you are working on a CD.

Jenni: Yeah, we are working on an album release, and have been seriously for the past 18 months, and now I am focusing on a fall opening. Part of that will be live recordings. I miss that in music 95% of our music is all studio recordings. So the uniqueness I am going to add into my release will be live recordings. Again, because I split myself into three persons, it takes more time to get this album done than a lot of musicians, but that is okay. Iit is not the quantity, it is the quality of it. 

Joyce Swan Keeler, oral historian and documentalist, sometimes joins Jenny on stage. She loves singing around the house and at her UVM job every chance she gets. She’s been writing mostly fr academia so is thrilled to be published with love at Good Citizen.