Johnny Hodges

Cornelius “Johnny” Hodges was born in 1907 at 137 Putnam Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the youngest of four children. Today, he’s generally regarded as the second most important alto saxophonist in jazz history, behind only Charlie Parker.

He moved with his family to Boston’s South End, where his father found jobs more plentiful at the Back Bay railroad station (as a porter) and in hotels and restaurants (as a waiter).  The Hammond Street neighborhood where Hodges grew up came to be known as “Saxophonists Ghetto” after the many practitioners of the instrument who lived there, including Harry Carney who, like Hodges, went on to become a longtime member of the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

MUSICAL BEGINNINGS, EARLY APPEARANCES

The Hodges family was a musical one.  Johnny took piano lessons from his mother and, according to her, “beat up all the pots and pans in the kitchen” playing drums on them, but he decided on the saxophone because a particular soprano model he saw in a store window “looked so pretty,”  he said. While he maintained throughout his life that he had limited musical training, he took formal lessons at New England Conservatory and received informal instruction from fellow saxophonists who he would persuade to show him what they knew.

Hodges played in the Boston area as a teen and had his own group in the Scollay Square entertainment district, fashioning his style after Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong. He began travelling to New York City in search of greater opportunities; nightclubs closed at 11pm in Boston but were open until 4am in “the city that never sleeps.” Venues he played in the Boston area included the Avery Hotel, Lamp’s Club, the Black and White Club and Kenmore Square’s Alpini Restaurant. His first jobs in New York City were at “dancing schools,” where men could meet and dance with women for a fee, but which provided no actual instruction. He became known to bandleaders through all-night jam sessions, and eventually worked with Willie “the Lion” Smith, Sidney Bechet and Chick Webb.

JOINING DUKE ELLINGTON, COMPOSITIONS, NICKNAMES

Webb’s band served as a farm team for other bandleaders, and after Ellington made several unsuccessful attempts to lure Hodges away, the saxophonist finally left Webb for Ellington’s band in 1928. Over time, he became the leading soloist in the band, achieving headliner status due in large part to his lush tone, which Ellington showcased on ballads. He remained steeped in the New Orleans blues he had absorbed listening to Bechet and Armstrong, however, and contributed compositions such as “Jeep’s Blues” and “The Jeep Is Jumping” that served as a counterweight to Ellington’s more ambitious orchestral works. “Jeep” was one of Hodges’ many nicknames, after a character in the Popeye comic strip; the most widely-used of his monikers was “Rabbit,” which he said was due to his ability to outrun truant officers as a boy, but which his neighborhood pal Harry Carney attributed to his rabbit-like appearance as he ate lettuce and tomato sandwiches.

LEAVING ELLINGTON, RETURNING TO ELLINGTON

Hodges left Ellington in 1951 with support from record producer Norman Granz, who persuaded him that he could make more money as a leader than as an employee. He took two other Ellington defectors with him, drummer Sonny Greer and trombonist Lawrence Brown, and along with a rotating roster of sidemen they performed as Johnny Hodges & His Orchestra or, in a smaller configuration, as the Johnny Hodges Septet. The group had a hit that presaged rock ‘n’ roll, “Castle Rock” (on which Hodges did not solo), but he found that he didn’t have the personality to be a frontman and disliked being saddled with administrative tasks that Ellington could delegate to others in his organization. As a result, he disbanded the group and took a job playing in a television show’s band; his second wife called Ellington and asked if he needed an alto, and Ellington hired Hodges back in August 1955.

COMEBACK, DEATH, BLUES SUMMIT, HONORARY PLAQUE

Charlie Parker had died in March of that year, and Hodges enjoyed a comeback beginning at the age of 48 that coincided with the Ellington band’s revival following its historic performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. He died in 1970 at the age of 62 at his dentist’s office; feeling chest pain in the middle of a procedure, he stood up and had a heart attack. At his funeral, Duke Ellington said his orchestra would “never sound the same” without Johnny Hodges.

Much of Hodges’s music remains available on CDs and streaming services. A good introduction to his work is Blues Summit, a two-album compilation of recordings he made with Ellington and small groups originally titled Back to Back and Side by Side. In the six decades since these sessions were recorded, they have never gone out of print.

On July 25, 2026, the 119th anniversary of Hodges’ birthday, the City of Cambridge installed a plaque in Hodges’s honor on Putnam Avenue, across the street from his birthplace.

(by Con Chapman)

Con Chapman is the author of Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges (Oxford University Press, 2019), Kansas City Jazz: A Little Evil Will Do You Good (Equinox Publishing, 2023 and Sax Expat: Don Byas (University Press of Mississippi, 2025).