I think the following Wiki ref. is worth following up.
Jan Johansson (16 September 1931 – 9 November 1968) was a
Swedish jazz pianist. He is little known outside Scandinavia, and his records are not widely available, though
Jazz på svenska (
Jazz in Swedish) has sold more than a quarter of a million copies, and is the best selling jazz release ever in Sweden.
Johansson was a native of
Söderhamn, in the
Hälsingland province of Sweden. Studying classical piano as a child, he would also go on to master the guitar, organ and accordion, before turning on to
swing and
bebop as a teenager. He met saxophonist
Stan Getz while at university. He abandoned his studies to play jazz full time, and worked with many American jazz musicians, becoming the first European to be invited to join the
Jazz at the Philharmonic package.
The years 1961 to 1968 produced a string of classic albums, which would help define his style of re-imagining traditional European folk tunes via jazz and the avant garde. These included
Jazz på svenska and
Jazz på ryska (
Jazz in Russian) which are both available in an expanded form on CD.
Jazz på ungerska (
Jazz in Hungarian) together with Danish Jazz
violinist Svend Asmussen is the third album in that series.
Jazz in Swedish comprises variations on sixteen Swedish folk songs with
Georg Riedel playing acoustic bass. During this period, Johansson also made several recordings with
Radiojazzgruppen.
The
Grammy award winning albums
Musik genom fyra sekler (
Music from the past four centuries) builds on traditional Swedish melodies, but this time uses larger groups of musicians. There were also
300.000 and two trio sets,
8 Bitar and
Innertrio, which have been reissued as a single CD.
With his career including film & TV music, Johansson is also best known as the composer of "Here Comes Pippi Longstocking" ("Här kommer Pippi Långstrump"), the theme song of the famous
Swedish TV series,
Pippi Longstocking. With lyrics by character/series creator
Astrid Lindgren and sung by the series' young star
Inger Nilsson, it would also be one of Johansson's last works.
[1]
His album "Barnkammarmusik" (two translations: "Children's Chamber Music" and "Children's Room Music") should be a standard component of every music appreciation class worldwide.
In November 1968 Jan Johansson died in a car crash on his way to a concert in a church in
Jönköping, Sweden. His sons,
Anders Johansson and
Jens Johansson, run
Heptagon Records which keeps their father's recordings available.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN74qJW6IA8&feature=player_detailpage