Jan Johansson

Jan Johansson was born on the 16th of September 1931 in Söderhamn, Sweden, and began to play the piano at age 11. He moved to Gothenburg, Sweden to study electro engineering. It was during this period he met Stan Getz, who was living in Copenhagen, Denmark at the time. It didn't take long until Jan had to end his studies to move to Copenhagen to play with Getz. Jan played with a lot of different American jazz greats, and was the first European ever to join "Jazz at the Philharmonic". In 1957 he married his wife Else. In 1961-68 he lived in Stockholm, where he was very productive. He recorded about 20 records under his own name, wrote music for the Swedish Radio and TV (the Pippi Longstocking theme music, for example) and had two sons, Jens and Anders who both have become world wide known musicians themselves. Some of the more famous records are: Jazz på svenska ("Jazz in Swedish"), which has sold platinum many times over, Jazz på ryska ("Jazz in Russian"), Musik genom fyra sekler ("Music through four centuries"), 8 bitar Johansson ("8 pieces Johansson") and Innertrio. Jan was honoured with a lot of gold records, Grammies and other awards. On November 9th 1968 Jan Johansson was killed in a car crash on his way to a church concert in Jönköping, Sweden. After all these years since his death he is still the best selling and most well respected jazz piano player in Scandinavia.