Jan Johansson was born In Söderhamn/ Hälsingland, Sweden, on September 16, 1931. He started playing the piano in 1942 at the age of 11, studying classical music, but as a teenager he soon gave in to the prevalent swing and bebop music, performing locally with swing and dance bands of his hometown. In the beginning 1950s he moved to Gothenburg and started studying electrical engineering at the Technical College in Chalmers, Sweden. While studying there, he played for the "Chalmersspextet", a theater group of sorts, as well as with Kenneth Fagerlund (big band leader) and in Gunnar Johnson's (bass) quintet. Johansson never completed his studies and dropped out to devote himself to music fulltime. It was also at that time that he told Swedish music magazine Orkesterjournalen, that pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, was his biggest influence and was, at the end, responsible for him dropping his studies and trying his hand at being a fulltime musician
Johansson had met Stan Getz in Gothenburg and decided to move to Copenhagen, Denmark, where Stan getz was living at the time. The two ended up playing and recording together at Copenhagen's world-famous jazz club, Montmartre, recordings which are nearly impossible to find today outside of the bootleg circuit. As was customary at the time, he then also played with many of the prominent American jazz musicians that visited the club (Oscar Pettiford, for example). Johansson was later the first European jazz musician that was invited to tour with "Jazz at The Philharmonic" Finally, in 1961, he moved back to Stockholm, Sweden, and started working with Arne Domnérus, George Riedel and others, and started recording his own body of work. He didn't limit himself to the piano and on several recordings he can be heard playing guitar, organ or harmonica
As an aside many of you might have come in contact with Jan Johansson afterall because to many, he is most famous for one single tune he wrote, when working together with Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, putting music to her texts and composing that one tune many a child can sing, "Här kommer Pippi Långstrump", "Here Comes Pipi Longstocking". Next to his jazz recordings, he also composed for symphony orchestras, choirs and even the electronic scene of his time, reinterpreted well-known children's songs and composed a slew of scores for Swedish television. He even composed the music for a Pipi Longstocking ballet together with Lars Hollmer and George Riedel which was performed in Kuopio in Finland.
On November 9, 1968 Jan Johansson died in a car accident..
