Talk:James P. Johnson

Death date

Other sources on the web say he died in 1945. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mballen (talk • contribs) 21:08, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Johnson's New York Times Obituary says Nov 17, 1955. Sorry, but this fact is easily verifiable and not disputable, short of viewing a death certificate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stridedude (talk • contribs) 18:54, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced

Why does this entire biography seem like it had been lifted from an album cover? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.173.220.24 (talk) 12:59, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

It is even worse than that. I have added the {Refimprove} and {POV} tags - frankly the article is almost entirely unreferenced and suffers badly from pomposity. Can someone with a knowledge of the subject matter, please try to help. Thanks,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 21:13, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I've reduced the pomposity, but can't take on the referencing... EddieHugh (talk) 22:16, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Critique

The article of James P. Johnson from Wikipedia is moderately credible due to the lacking details in different parts of Johnson’s life. The different events and musical parts he played throughout his lifetime seem to match up in the Wikipedia and the article “Johnson, James P.” by William P. Gottlieb that was published in American National Biography Online. The details within the Wikipedia article were not sufficient; especially one’s portraying the down times of Johnson’s music career. The organization of the Wikipedia article seems to be all over the place compared to the well-structured article William Gottlieb wrote. The article written by Gottlieb had a lot more details regarding James Johnson’s life and musical career as a whole.

The article written by Gottlieb starts off with a lot more details about the early life of Johnson than the Wikipedia article does. Gottlieb’s article points out Johnson’s love for playing the piano along with the first relocation by Johnson’s family while he was an adolescent, but the Wikipedia article does not discuss this. Both articles do make note of the second move the family made, which was from Jersey City to Manhattan in 1908. Gottlieb also goes on to thoroughly describe the early parts of Johnson’s musical love from his first job as a pianist to his studying of European piano tradition with Bruto Giannini. Gottlieb’s article also includes a point in an interview when Johnson discussed the different advantages he believed he had over his rivals.

Gottlieb goes on to discuss some of Johnson’s personal life beginning with the meeting and marriage of Johnson’s wife, Lillie Mae Wright, which the Wikipedia article never made mention of. Gottlieb continued to go through Johnson’s early career thoroughly and discussing his early ventures especially with stride playing on the piano. Gottlieb then gives a very intense description on what stride playing is to keep the reader informed with what the musical terms were. The article on Wikipedia notes the music labels Johnson released the music under, but the article written by Gottlieb never discusses the music labels Johnson released the music under or for.

The article written by Gottlieb has different reasons for the downfall of Johnson’s music career than the Wikipedia article does. The Wikipedia article credits the economic downfall at the time (depression era); limited opportunities to record and perform live for Johnson’s musical downfall. The Wikipedia also described Johnson as content with his composer royalties to the point where he devoted more time to advancing his education. Gottlieb’s article simply states that the change of times and tastes of music was the main culprit of Johnson’s musical downfall. The “swing era” which began in the 1930s pushed Johnson and many others within the early jazz era back into the dark. His resurgence along with others in the traditional jazz era is also seen different in the two articles. Gottlieb writes that Johnson’s resurgence is simply due to the rebirth of traditional jazz in an era where it had faded. The Wikipedia article states that Johnson’s musical renaissance was more so due to the emergence of independent music labels and his willingness to record again. The Wikipedia article and Gottlieb’s article both have the same information mainly regarding Johnson’s career after his music resurfaced in the late 1930s.

The Wikipedia article could have a lot more citations within the article. At the header of the Wikipedia article a sign states that more citations are needed for the verification and legitimacy of the article on James Johnson. This would make the reader already have questions about the complete accuracy of the article. The Wikipedia article has very few references and the reliability of the references are up for question. Gottlieb’s article has many different references ranging from a biography written by another author on James Johnson to excerpts from books on Willie Smith’s life, one of Johnson’s closest friends. There were points of contention on “The Talk” page regarding the year and date of his death, but that has been verified. As stated before, mentioned on “The Talk” page is the lack of references and citations throughout the article. The Wikipedia article lacks these references, which seriously takes away from the credibility of the article because of the lack of knowing where the information is coming from. Gottlieb’s article cites one source, but it is a Biography from another author on American National Biography about James Johnson.

The complete organization and structure within the Wikipedia article was somewhat rangy in the topics that were discussed together. The Wikipedia article veered off on many different occasions into topics that didn’t relate to the current issue. Latter points in Johnson’s life were made reference to early on in the article when they should have been aligned to be discussed together in the correct parts of the article. The Wikipedia article also gives details on other musicians and events that don’t seem to have much importance on what Johnson’s life and musical career were. This all contributes to the lack of complete structure and organization in the Wikipedia article on James Johnson. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jalenbrown13 (talk • contribs) 14:01, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

If you want to include more information drawing on Gottlieb's article, that's fine. You will appreciate that the article has been edited piecemeal by many editors over the years - that is how Wikipedia works, for good or ill. But, you must put any text into your own words - see WP:COPYVIO and WP:PARAPHRASE. And, you should learn how to use Wikipedia's referencing system properly - see WP:REF. You should also retain and add, rather than remove as you did in your last edit, internal links to other articles - see WP:LINK. My first reaction on seeing your edits was simply to revert them as being contrary to many of Wikipedia's guidelines as to article content and style (WP:MOS). I've added some links on your own talk page as guidance. If you're prepared to learn how things are done here, and do it yourself, that would be for the best for everyone. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:05, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

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