Johnny Răducanu, Răducan Creţu by his given name, was the greatest Romanian jazz musician and he has not been surpassed as yet. He was nicknamed “Mister Jazz of Romania”, either by Duke Ellington or by music journalist Leonard Feather, which shows the extent of his contribution to Romanian jazz.
He played the piano, the double bass, he composed, arranged and even contributed to the staging of a play called “Dialogues and Fantasies” which starred legendary Romanian actor Ion Caramitru.
Johnny Raducanu was born in Brăila on the 1st of December 1931, to a Romani family with a musical tradition that goes back to the 17th century. He discovered jazz music on his elder brother’s gramophone when he was very young. He listened to “Caravan” and “Prelude to a kiss” by Duke Ellington and they were revelatory to him, although at this point he believed that “jazz” was the name of the artist.
He was a musical prodigy, having learned by heart the first book of Czerny’s piano studies at the age of 9 and performing Mozart, Beethoven and ragtime on piano by the age of 10. He studied music in Iasi and Cluj-Napoca and when he was 19 years old, he enrolled at the Music Academy in Bucharest. He studied chamber music, harmony and above all else, bass, a traditional family instrument.
By the 1960s, due to the somewhat more lenient regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, Raducanu was able to introduce jazz to the Romanian intellectual elite and to release his own disc, Jazz Trio. He released four more discs and was even allowed to go on tours in western European countries and even the States.
He had musical collaborations with Art Farmer, Frederich Gulda, Slide Hampton and Barney Kessel, while in Romania he played with Aura Urziceanu and Teodora Enache, two other remarkable jazz musicians.
After 1990, he performed many live shows in bars, the most notable of which was Enache’s Milk Bar in Bucharest. In these sessions, he shared the stage with clarinetist Alin Constantin or drummer Tudy Zaharescu.
Johnny Răducanu died on September 19, 2011 leaving a unique musical legacy.
Surse:
“Johnny Răducanu”, Last FM, Available at: http://www.last.fm/music/Johnny +Raducanu/+wiki, Accessed: 10.14.2015.
“Johnny Răducanu obituary” The Guardian, Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/nov/11/johnny-raducanu, Accessed: 10.14.2015.
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