plas johnson...

Happy 92nd birthday to saxophonist Plas Johnson, who was born on this date July 21, 1931 in Donaldsonville, Louisiana.He's probably most widely known as the tenor saxophone soloist on Henry Mancini’s "The Pink Panther Theme".

He and his pianist brother Ray first recorded as the Johnson Brothers in New Orleans in the late 1940s.. He first toured with R&B singer Charles Brown in 1951. After army service, he and his brother moved to Los Angeles in 1954, and he soon began session recordings as a full-time musician, backing artists such as B.B. King and Johnny Otis as well as scores of other R&B performers.

Recruited by Johnny Otis and executive Dave Cavanaugh for Capitol Records in the mid-1950s, Johnson also played on many records by Peggy Lee, Nat "King" Cole, Glen Gray, Frank Sinatra and others.

He remained a leading session player for almost twenty years, averaging two sessions a day and playing everything from movie soundtracks and Les Baxter's exotica albums, to rock and roll singles by such artists as Ricky Nelson and Bobby Vee, and R&B records by such performers as Larry Williams, Bobby Day, and Richard Berry.

He played on many of the Beach Boys’ records, and was an integral part of a number of instrumental groups that existed in name only, such as B. Bumble and the Stingers and The Marketts.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was a regular member of Henry Mancini's studio orchestra and in 1963 he recorded "The Pink Panther Theme", written by Mancini with Johnson in mind.

Johnson joined the studio band for the Merv Griffin Show in 1970, and also played with a number of jazz and swing bands of the period. He joined Lincoln Mayorga in creating direct-to-disc recordings for Sheffield Labs. He later recorded for the Concord label, worked with the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut, and toured in 1990 with the Gene Harris Superband.

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