Johnny Griffin

John Arnold Griffin III (born in 1928) is an American bop and hard bop tenor saxophonist. Like many other successful musicians from Chicago, he studied music at DuSable High School under Walter Dyett. Griffin, was reputed to be the 'W

John Arnold Griffin III (born in 1928) is an American bop and hard bop tenor saxophonist. Like many other successful musicians from Chicago, he studied music at DuSable High School under Walter Dyett. Griffin, was reputed to be the 'World's Fastest Saxophonist' in the jazz idiom, though as he aged, and as the jazz audience declined, this accolade has all but disappeared. In the 1940s and 1950s he worked in Lionel Hampton's and Joe Morris's bands, in the Jazz Messengers, and in the Thelonious Monk Quartet. From 1960 to 1962 he and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis led their own group. Having felt he had achieved much in the USA, his pinnacle on record arguably the 1957 Blowin' session on the Bluenote label with fellow tenor John Coltrane, he moved to Europe. He lived in France in 1963, moving to the Netherlands in 1978, and he still continues to record and tour.

'I like to play fast. I get excited, and I have to sort of control myself, restrain myself. But when the rhythm section gets cooking, I want to 'explode'.