Re-issues
Multiple CDs of Johnson's recordings have been reissued. The French Chronogical(sic) Classics series includes six discs devoted to Johnson. The Decca CD, Snowy Morning Blues, contains 20 sides done for the Brunswick and Decca labels, between 1930 and 1944. This CD includes an 8 tune, Fats Waller Memorial set, and 2 solos, "Jingles", and "You've Got to be Modernistic", which arguably demonstrate the best of Johnson's hard swinging stride style. The LP, and CD, Father of the Stride Piano, collects some of Johnson's best recordings for the Columbia family of labels, done between 1921 and 1939. It includes "Carolina Shout", "Worried and Lonesome Blues", and "Hungry Blues" (from De Organizer).
Johnson's complete Blue Note recordings (solos, band sides in groups led by himself as well as Edmond Hall and Sidney DeParis) were made available in a collection issued by Mosaic Records. The largest, and probably the best anthology of Johnson's recordings was compiled in the Giants of Jazz series by Time-Life Music. This three LP collection contains 40 sides recorded from 1921 to 1945, and is supplemented with extensive liner notes, including a biographical essay by Frank Kappler, and erudite criticism of the musical selections by the noted contemporary stride pianist Dick Wellstood, and the musicologist, Willa Rouder . Johnson was also a premier piano roll artist, recording approximately 60 rolls between 1917 and 1927. Many of these have been issued on CD, on the Biograph Label. A book of musical transcriptions of Johnson's piano roll performances of his own compositions has been prepared by Dr. Robert Pinsker, to be published through the auspices of the James P. Johnson Foundation.
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