In Russell's band, he met the trumpeter Fats Navarro, who influenced him to play in the style of the tenor saxophonist Lester Young.

In 1946, bebop co-founder Dizzy Gillespie encouraged the young trombonist's development: "I've always known that the trombone could be played different, that somebody'd catch on one of these days.

"[5] After leaving Basie in 1946 to play in small bebop bands in New York clubs,[3] Johnson toured in 1947 with Illinois Jacquet.

During this period, he also began recording as a leader of small groups featuring Max Roach, Sonny Stitt and Bud Powell.

[6] In 1951, with bassist Oscar Pettiford and trumpeter Howard McGhee, Johnson toured the military camps of Japan and Korea, before returning to the United States and taking a day job as a blueprint inspector.

Johnson admitted later he was still thinking of nothing but music during that time, and indeed, his Blue Note recordings as both a leader and with Miles Davis date from this period.

In January 1967, Johnson and Winding were in an all-star line-up (alongside the likes of Clark Terry, Charlie Shavers and Joe Newman) backing Sarah Vaughan on her last sessions for Mercury Records, released as the album Sassy Swings Again, with three of the cuts, including Billy Strayhorn's "Take the "A" Train", being arranged by Johnson himself.

These groups (ranging from quartets to sextets) included tenor saxophonists Bobby Jaspar and Clifford Jordan, cornetist Nat Adderley, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, pianists Tommy Flanagan and Cedar Walton, and drummers Elvin Jones, Albert "Tootie" Heath, and Roach.

The late 1960s saw a radical downturn in the fortunes of many jazz musicians, and Johnson was consequently heard almost exclusively on big band-style studio records, usually backing a single soloist.

In 1965, he spent time in Vienna to perform and record his Euro Suite with a jazz-classical fusion orchestra led by Friedrich Gulda.

Tours of the United States, Europe and Japan followed as well as a return engagement to the Vanguard in July 1988 which yielded two albums worth of material.

While touring Japan in December 1988,[3] Johnson learned that his wife Vivian had suffered a bad stroke, which incapacitated her for the remaining three and a half years of her life.

Following this second comeback in 1992, Johnson's contracts with a variety of record labels, including Verve and Antilles, resulted in five albums as a leader, from small groups to separate brass orchestra and string orchestra recordings, as well as sideman appearances with his leading disciple, trombonist Steve Turre, and the vocalist Abbey Lincoln.

Later diagnosed with prostate cancer, Johnson maintained a positive outlook[citation needed] and underwent treatment.