He was one of the most famous musicians in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. A virtuoso soloist, a prolific composer and an impresario, he led his famed band on tours throughout the United States and to Europe, decades before John Philip Sousa. His name was Francis Johnson (1792-1844) a Black, native-born Philadelphian. Why was this remarkable figure almost swallowed by history, and how is his legacy now gradually reclaiming its rightful place in the story of American music?
The Wake of a Revolution
To understand Johnson’s life, it’s helpful to consider the U.S.A. in the first half of the 1800s. He lived at a time of tectonic transformations in society, in music, and in musical instruments. When Johnson was born, George Washington was President of a largely agrarian country. There were 15 states, and travel between them was slow and difficult. Philadelphia was the national capital, with a population of around 50,000 (roughly the size of Harrisburg today).
By the end of Johnson’s relatively short life, the Industrial Revolution was taking hold in the United States, and there were 24 states. Railroads were beginning to crisscross the country, and steamboats were plying the rivers and waterways. The issue of race and slavery in Pennsylvania was complex during Johnson’s lifetime. In 1780, Pennsylvania instituted the nation’s first legislative act toward abolition (“An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery”) which meant children born in the state from that point on were free. But there were still enslaved persons in the state until the middle of the century.
In this era before recordings, music could only be heard live: If you wanted to hear it, you either needed to go where it was being performed, or play it yourself. Live music was everywhere, and there was a constant demand for new pieces, particularly those intended for mass consumption: marches, dance music and parlor songs. This music was often performed outdoors, for parades and civic events, and in a time before amplification, volume was a serious consideration. The loudest ensembles for their size were wind bands, and when Johnson began his career, these would have resembled the “harmonie” ensembles known to Mozart and Beethoven — typically oboes, clarinets, bassoons, valveless “natural” horns, sometimes valveless trumpets, percussion, and occasionally on the bottom, a serpent. This was a holdover from the late 16th century, a curved bass instrument made of wood with a brass mouthpiece and fingerholes to change pitches.
Here was the conundrum for bands at that time: the woodwinds were fully chromatic (they could play all the black and white notes on the piano) but not very loud, susceptible to the weather, and fragile for military uses. Brass instruments were sturdy and had big, powerful sounds, but with the exception of the trombone, could only play a handful of notes, similar to those used in summer camp bugle calls. In 1810, a game-changer was patented in Ireland: the keyed bugle, a metal bugle but with tone holes and keys rather like those we associate with the saxophone. It was fully chromatic, and was soon developed into an entire family, soprano down to bass (the ophicleide). The keyed bugle was the instrument on which Francis Johnson would rise to fame as a performer and reshape the future of bands in America.
Bandleader for Hire
Francis Johnson was born on June 16, 1792. Little is known about his childhood, though he seems to have had early connections with successful Black merchant families and church leaders. He first appears in music history in 1807 as a fiddler (apparently self-taught) at Philadelphia’s Exchange Coffee House. George Willig, a local music publisher visiting the coffee house, heard Johnson perform an original composition and offered to publish it; thereby Johnson’s “Bingham’s Cotillion” became the first piece of music by an African American composer to be published in the U.S. Johnson was soon in demand as a composer among local music publishers, and began to explore other avenues that would sustain a full-time musical career. He was greatly aided in this in 1813 when the keyed bugle was brought to the States. Johnson quickly became an accomplished performer on this instrument, possibly aided by instruction from Richard Willis, a keyed bugle virtuoso and the first band director at West Point.
Among the sources of musical employment at the time were dances or society functions, and the military. Johnson began to pursue both. He became known as a society band leader, playing for balls and “dancing assemblies” (venues which provided space and music for people to enjoy dancing). The founders of the country had a deep distrust of large standing armies, having seen the problems this caused in Europe. Instead, there were many militia units, composed of trained citizen-soldiers, who could be called upon as necessary, rather like the current national guard. In Philadelphia alone there were 33 of these volunteer units, comprising 1,180 members by 1829.
Buglers and trumpeters provided the signaling capacity of militaries for centuries, and Johnson soon began serving in this capacity for various units in Philadelphia. These services required equestrian skills, and the indefatigable Johnson set about becoming an expert horseman. He was able to gradually increase the number of musicians employed by the militias, forming a band of ever-increasing size.
Johnson began training younger musicians of color as early as 1814, including A.J.R. Conner, William Appo, James Hemmenway and Isaac Hazzard. Conner and Appo remained with Johnson’s ensembles through his career, while Hemmenway and Hazzard started bands of their own. All were also accomplished composers. In 1819, Johnson married Appo’s sister, Helen. Starting in 1821, Johnson and a band of six began playing as the summer “house band” at hotels of the Saratoga Springs resort in upstate New York — later the summer home of another group of “Fabulous Philadelphians.” Reaching Saratoga Springs required the band to take a steamboat from Philadelphia to Trenton, a stagecoach to New Brunswick, a steamboat to New York, another steamboat to Albany, and finally a stagecoach to Saratoga Springs!
In 1824 a hero of the Revolutionary War, the Marquis de Lafayette, made a triumphal return tour to the United States, and Johnson and his band provided much of the celebratory music for the occasion, including Johnson’s triumphal march “Honour to the Brave” (which included trumpet calls and musket volleys) and a set of cotillions for balls held in Lafayette’s honor.
At Home and Abroad
From this point on, Francis Johnson’s life was a whirl of activity. He seemed to be everywhere: his band played for dances and society functions, military events (touring with the State Fencibles to New York, Boston and Providence with 24 performers), and he maintained an active teaching schedule with both Black and white students.
In 1837, Johnson and four of his band members (including Connor and Appo) embarked on what may have been the first tour to Europe by an American instrumental ensemble. They arrived for the celebrations of the coronation of Queen Victoria, and presented numerous concerts, with each performer playing multiple instruments. They were regarded as both a remarkable novelty and a great success. Johnson was able to hear Johann Strauss II in London, and he traveled alone to Paris to hear the “Concerts a la Musard” programs which anticipated the “pops” concerts we know today. Upon returning to the U.S., Johnson incorporated these experiences into his “Promenade Concerts” for the Christmas season in 1838. These were some of the first interracial musical events in the country.
Racial tensions, always present, grew as the Abolitionist movement gained strength and the nation spiraled ever closer to the Civil War. Five days after Johnson’s return from Europe, Pennsylvania Hall — a splendid new building built to host Abolitionist, women’s suffrage and other reform events — was burned to the ground by a mob. Johnson and his band were no strangers to racial strife, and had suffered numerous incidents over the years. Sometimes other bands refused to perform at events if Johnson’s band was playing, and they were attacked by a mob in a town outside Pittsburgh. His works addressing racism, slavery and Black pride included the “March for the Recognition of the Independence of Hayti (sic)” and the moving abolitionist song “The Grave of the Slave,” set to lyrics by Sarah Forten, daughter of James Forten, a prominent Black Philadelphia businessman and sail maker. This was the first published abolitionist song by Black authors.
Johnson continued touring with his band, including trips in 1839 to Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland. In 1842 he mounted his “Grand Western Tour,” taking a band of 10 musicians through Buffalo; Pittsburgh; Louisville; Wheeling, West Virginia; and as far west as St. Louis, where the band members were apprehended and fined under a law which forbade free Black people from entering the state. With the help of a sympathetic attorney, the musicians were able to present their concerts and leave the city, later to be acquitted.
Obscurity and Rediscovery
Francis Johnson died on April 6, 1844, at 51, after a long illness. Hundreds of Philadelphians, both Black and white, attended his funeral, and legend has it that his bugle was placed atop his coffin as it was carried to his grave. While his band continued under the administration of his wife and the musical direction of Joseph Anderson, until close to the Civil War, it would be decades before another Philadelphia ensemble achieved the reach and influence of Francis Johnson and his famed band.
So why did such a remarkable figure almost disappear from our musical history? Obviously, racism and inequality played a big part, as the accomplishments of Black citizens were not as well preserved and documented as those of whites. Also, Johnson’s music was the popular music of the day — and as was the case with pop music, particularly before recordings, there was more interest in creating the “next new thing” than in preserving that which came before. As such, the music tended to fall out of fashion more quickly than pieces written in the “classical” realm.
A final reason for the lapse into obscurity had to do with musical materials. Johnson’s work only survived in arrangements for piano, sometimes greatly simplified, and only one small instrumental score survives. The instrumentation of bands was not standardized in Johnson’s time, so publication of full scores and parts would probably not have been lucrative.
He may also have felt that “if you want to hear my music, you need to hire my band.” We know that the size of his band varied according to the engagements they were playing, and it may be that there were no full scores at all, but rather that they worked from a condensed score containing about five parts, from which the player extrapolated a performance. Surviving published examples of such scores from the 1850s do survive.
The very nature of bands was also changing. Bands of the matched families of valved brasses developed by Adolphe Sax (the saxhorns) were becoming more common than the mixed woodwind and brass bands of Johnson’s time. These saxhorn bands reached their apex during the Civil War, and can be seen in many daguerreotypes and photographs from the era.
While there was a good deal of valuable scholarly writing about Francis Johnson, for a long time there wasn’t access to the sounds that brought him and his band to national attention. The surviving piano arrangements of Johnson’s music don’t do justice to what made his band a national sensation.
But in the 1980s, Philadelphia’s Grammy-winning brass quintet The Chestnut Brass Company decided to recreate Johnson’s full band as it would have sounded during his lifetime. Based on written accounts, pictures, surviving notations in the piano versions, and scores from other bands at the time, they reconstructed more than 30 of his scores, and assembled a 21-piece period instrument band to record them. That recording is now out of print, but all the tracks are on YouTube, and provided the examples included in this article. The recording helped to fuel a groundswell of interest in Johnson and his music.
Numerous articles and a wonderful biography by Charles K. Jones have appeared since that time, and a three-volume edition of his complete works has been released. After over 100 years lost to history, a voice that was silenced by time is reawakening. The story of Francis Johnson, of his memorable music and his remarkable life, is reclaiming its rightful place in the musical history of the United States.
