Early one morning in May 1986 during the Jazz festival in Breda, a couple of devotees were walking back to the Hotel. The subject of the talk was Bunk Johnson and we realized that after the passing of the London based Bunk Johnson Appreciation Society many years earlier, there were no associations left who took care of the memory of the great horn man. Since all of us mouldy fygges walking home that beautiful morning in Holland were Swedes, we decided to start up a foundation named “The Swedish Bunk Johnson Society”. Back home again in Sweden we contacted friends who we knew were Bunkistas and put them on the idea. In January 1987 we constituted “The Swedish Bunk Johnson Society” at our first meeting held at the home of Åke Sahlberg in Täby just outside Stockholm. I remember we were only about a handful of people at that time.

Åke is a fanatic Bunk Johnson devotee. He had travelled to New Iberia (where Bunk Johnson lived during the 30:s and up to his death July 7th, 1949) several times. He had spent a night in Bunks old house (now deserted, but Åke got permission from the present owner). Åke brought home some invaluable memorabilia like the doorknob of Bunk´s bath room, some pieces of the old wallpaper from the living room, a magnifying glass, etc. We had formal discussions how to settle the Society. We formed rules. We discussed the persons we were about to ask to join, etc. We decided the Society should not be an ordinary paying Fan Club, but rather kind of Academy, to which you would be invited and selected. We recruited Bunk Johnson devotees  both domestic and from abroad.

Today we have got about 80 foreign members and about the same number of Swedes.

We are holding an annual meeting in Stockholm every year. The first twenty years we held it in January, but the last three years in March or April (a much more attractive period in the Royal Capitol of Sweden). We try to invite guest speakers at this meeting and up to now we have succeeded in getting people, for instance Sam Charters, Mike Hazeldine (many times) Orange Kellin, Lars Edegran, Mike Pointon, Chris Hillman, Rainer Lotz, Rolf Wahl, William “Brother Bill” Wagner (Bill Russells brother), Brian Wood, Tom Bethell, Doug Landau, Fred Eatherton, Don Marquis, Jack Stanley, Bo Lindström, Jens Lindgren.

Since about twenty years we have been issuing “The BUNK JOHNSON INFORMATION” bi-annually under the leadership of Chief Editor Håkan Håkansson with help from co-editor Mike Hazeldine. From now on we will publish the paper once a year.

In 2006 we published “BUNK JOHNSON – A DISCOGRAPHY” compiled by Fred Eatherton with the assistance of Mike Hazeldine. (still available).

The purpose of the Bunk Johnson website is to promote the memory of the Great Horn Man by spreading memorabilia, music, articles and similar stuff. The aim is also to put Bunk Johnson in a wider context concerning the history of jazz and to emphasize his role in this history and his relations and impact to different periods of the jazz age. We will intend to provide updated lists of reference literature, articles from different sources, books dealing with our subject and a complete (as complete as can be) discography.

We will also try to update “The Bunk Johnson Story” albeit  Mike Hazeldine & Barry Martyn have done a “labour of love” with their monumental book “Song of Wanderer” (Jazzology Press, New Orleans, 2000). There will always come up major and minor addenda to his biography.

We will also give you some information from New Iberia, his hometown from the early 30s up to his death on July 7th, 1949.  He is buried at St. Edwards cemetery in that town.

We will also give you some information about some important joints where Bunk played and recorded, and we start up with The San Jacinto Hall (Club) on 1422 Dumaine Street in New Orleans, where a lot of Bill Russell´s American Music Records were made, and The Styvesant Casino on 140 Second Avenue, Lower East Side in New York City, where Bunk Johnson had very important engagements during 1945 and 1946.

We are also working hard on a descent collection of photos and of course we want a lot of help from our website visitors in making it as complete as possible.

During a lot of consecutive issues of the Bunk Johnson Information, our distinguished member Tom Pauli has done an incredible work in transcribing a lot of Bunk Johnson´s music. With Tom´s very kind courtesy we can publish these marvellous transcriptions on our website – with very important comments by Tom Pauli and webmaster Christer Fellers.

Some years ago I hade a little discussion with the late and the one and only when it comes to remastering, John RT Davies. He was, among a lot of other things, an expert to correct the 78-speed from old recordings. At that time he was convinced that Louis Armstrong played his immortal recording from Febr 26, 1926, “Cornet Chop Suey” in concert Eb. Objections came from different sources, claiming it must be in concert F. So my dear friend Kjell Westling (so far not a member of the Bunk Johnson Society) and I wrote a little “letter to the editor” of New Orleans Music (attached as a link on the website), where we argued about the right key. We were convinced of the key of  F.

When the complete Hot Five & Hot Seven recordings again were issued a year or so later John RT Davies added both versions, Eb and F. Both of them you can hear from the website and you can decide for yourself which of them is correct.

Just after the publication of “The Song of the Wanderer”, with the enclosed CD with odd recordings, the old, eternal question came up again. On the record from Caravan Ballroom in New York City in October 1947:  Is it Bunk Johnson playing, or is it his disciple Jerry Blumberg. In trying to solve the question  we activated the Bunk Johnson Information Research Division under the leadership of me and the Bunk Johnson Trial Group and we did a prospective questionnaire study “Bunk Johnson or Jerry Blumberg on the trumpet/cornet chair on “St. Louis Blues”, Recorded at the Caravan Ballroom in New York City,  October 1947”. The study was published in Bunk Johnson Information in the Spring 2002 issue. The results you can see on the link. A first comment has come from our webmaster. We welcome a lot more.

With the start in January 1987, at the home of Åke Sahlberg, we have celebrated annual meetings every year since then. The first 20 or so were held in January, but we found out that Stockholm is a far more attractive city in springtime, so we changed to march – april. We will try to put photos from the meetings continuously on the website.

The Swedish Bunk Johnson Society

Sundsvall, Sweden, August, 2010

Claes Ringqvist

President