In the Kitchen with Johnny Hodges: How A Single Note Can Change Everything

Welcome to our 8th installment of our Summer Camp News Bulletin. This past week, Brad went to a visionary classroom to meet a famous musician who brought us a teaching on the power
of a single, perfect tone.

In the dream, we went to a very large mansion where an older man met us at the door:

He immediately took us to the kitchen. There we were stunned to see how tall the ceiling was—like the height of a chapel. It was strangely covered with large electrical junction boxes. There were only three lights on the right side—one was bright and two were dim. Together they created a theatrical effect like a single spotlight with two background lights. We could not stop gazing upward, wondering why this place, with so much masterful restoration, had a kitchen ceiling that looked like an electrical power station.

We then realized that we were looking at the house as buyers, considering whether to purchase it. The entry and the rooms we passed on our way to the kitchen were perfectly finished with every detail pleasing to the eye. But the kitchen had those electrical devices overhead that were not an aesthetically pleasing sight. Furthermore, the cabinets and counter tops had been refinished but not yet painted. We remained fixated on the kitchen.

Just as we were about to ask the man what was going on with the ceiling, he surprised us by singing a beautiful operatic song. We didn’t understand a word since it was in a foreign language, possibly French. When he finished, we heard the doorbell ring. It was the realtor and, even before she entered, we could feel her sales pitch already revving up. I stayed in the kitchen, picked up a paint brush and started to paint the counter and cabinets as if I owned the place. I quickly remembered that we were only looking at it now and put down the brush.

The realtor went outside to check something and the man of the house who originally greeted us said with a twinkle in his eye, “It’s time for you to meet Johnny Hodges.” He took us to a backroom and there a man sang with the most amazing tone we’d ever heard. We were left speechless.

19. Johnny Hodges | Johnny hodges, Jazz musicians, Jazz — Johnny Hodges

The host brought us back to the kitchen and we again looked up at the ceiling. This time I imagined covering it with a grid to keep the electrical equipment hidden, while making the lighting even more dramatic. Just as I completed that thought, the ceiling was instantly altered as I had envisioned it, and it looked spectacular. I said to Hillary, “It looks like the cosmos with a supernova and two other stars nearby.” The host smiled and answered, “You obviously heard what Johnny Hodges had to say.” The kitchen looked like another world—it was absolutely divine.

“You obviously heard what Johnny Hodges
had to say.”

The realtor finally came in and mentioned that it was time to leave. Hillary and I looked at her and she appeared naked to us. When we went outside the house, some of the people walking by also looked naked, while others did not. Somehow hearing Johnny Hodges sing changed how we saw things. We could see the truth behind any outer appearances in a new kind of way.
The host noticed that our senses had been opened. He laughed and said, “I’m happy you could visit the big house of Johnny Hodges and hear what he had to say. One more thing—teach everyone that there’s no need to show the electrical power station; just focus on making a life changing tone.”

I woke up trying to remember who Johnny Hodges was, thinking he was either a singer or composer. I knew the name and he seemed so familiar, but I still couldn’t remember. We looked him up and laughed that I had forgotten he was Duke Ellington’s main alto saxophone player. He is regarded as one of the two greatest alto players in jazz history, the other was Charlie Parker. Unlike Parker, who set new horizons for speed and harmonic invention, Hodges was known for the beauty of his tone. One critic described his tonal coloration as able to change at any time: “all the varieties and moods that could come out of an alto saxophone, at different moments lyrical, earthy, elegiac, and sensual.”

A Musical Man of Mystery

Benny Goodman described Hodges as “by far the greatest man on alto sax that I ever heard.” Charlie Parker called him “the Lily Pons of his instrument,”^[1] referring to the famous expressive French opera singer of their time. He evoked such emotion that some said he “played to open the door of a woman’s bedroom.” Duke Ellington said his “tonal charisma” was too complex to describe.^[2] More generally, he sounded like “he didn’t so much play the horn as sing through it.”^[3]

His life was an enigma. He rarely spoke or gave interviews. His biographer, Con Chapman, wrote, “Hodges was a musical man of mystery, but he could be instantly identified by that most ephemeral of things; a single musical note, one of the few musicians in the history of jazz about whom that could be said as anything other than sheer hyperbole.”^[4] He added, “Ellington’s band was able to avoid having to hire a vocalist for many years because the song-like playing of Hodges fulfilled the emotional space that would have been taken up by a singer.”

What made him loved was how he “kept his tenderness in reserve—never laying it on too thick—and used technique to express emotions without maudlin flourishes.” Jazz writer Scott Yano concluded that Hodges possessed “the most beautiful tone ever heard in jazz.”^[5]

Back to Back: Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges Play the Blues ... — Duke Ellington (left), with Johnny Hodges

Brad met Duke Ellington and shook his hand late in the afternoon of September 25, 1969. He still remembers the exact spot on the earth where that took place—outside a college chapel. That night he heard his orchestra, featuring Johnny Hodges on alto saxophone. Hodges played “I Got It Bad” and was featured in some selections from Ellington’s masterpiece, “Sacred Concert,” with Hodges playing the song, “Heaven.” A year and a half later Brad had a full-blown mystical experience at age 19. We’re going to go ahead and say it had something to do with hearing Johnny Hodges play.

Hearing just one single tone can pierce your heart, change your perception, and alter the whole room of your life. There is no need to show what is behind this mystery—it’s the electrical power station on high. Cover it up with a grid that has many holes for light to shine through. Then all is aesthetic, copasetic, and ecstatic. Let’s go back in history and listen to the tonal teaching of Pointer Johnny Hodges (another tune is thrown in as an encore for your inner body):