![\"Hodges\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Hodges.jpg\")
<\/a>Thanks to Michael Cuscuna and Mosaic Records for the reminder that yesterday, Johnny Hodges (1906-1970) would have celebrated his 109th birthday. Hodges\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 alto saxophone (and in his early career the soprano sax) were so closely associated with Duke Ellington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s orchestra, it is easy to assume that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where he started. In fact, he left his native Boston in 1924 and worked regularly in New York with his mentor Sidney Bechet, Willie \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Lion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Smith, Lloyd Scott, Chick Webb and Luckey Roberts—among others—before he joined Ellington in the spring of 1928. He became one of the band\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s principal soloists and remained so the rest of his life except for four years in the 1950s when he led his own band before he returned to Ellington. <\/p>\nIn 1936, the Ellington band recorded one of the composer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s loveliest and least known ballads, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Black Butterfly,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with solos by baritone saxophonist Harry Carney and trombonist Lawrence Brown. The song resurfaced in the late 1960s with Hodges as the featured soloist. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s listen to the originally issued take of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Black Butterfly,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d then watch the video of Hodges and the Ellington band playing it in Berlin in 1969, the year before Hodges\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 death.<\/p>\n