For musicians with exceedingly common names, there is sometimes more information about who someone isn't than who they are. An entire band could be worked up out of the pool of musicians named Charlie Johnson or Charles Johnson, but this trumpeter associated with the early days of the Duke Ellington band would not have been available after 1937. That Johnson died in that year is the only fact revealed about him in John Chilton's Who's Who in Jazz, for example, even though this is a volume that concentrates on musicians from the early days of swing and classic jazz. The most important thing for Chilton to establish was that the trumpeter was not the same Charlie Johnson as the pianist and composer who led several different bands during the same era. He should also not be confused with the trombonist of the same name who played with Benny Carter several decades later, not to mention the gospel guitarist or the rhythm and blues saxophonist Lemuel Charlie Johnson. Along with players such as fellow trumpeter Bubber Miley and a pair of trombonists, Charlie Irvis and Jimmy Harrison, this particular Johnson played in early Ellington aggregations named Duke Ellington's Washingtonians and the Hotsy Totsy Boys. Johnson can be heard on Ellington collections including 1924-1926: Birth of a Band, Vol. 1 on the EPM label. ~ Eugene Chadbourne