Lonnie Johnson
Encyclopedia
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson (February 8, 1899 – June 16, 1970) was an American blues
and jazz
singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar
and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solo
s. Johnson was not only one of the few black blues musicians invited to be 'guest featured' on a number of jazz recording sessions, he was also one of the only classic 1920's blues artists to have a revived a high-charting career after WWII.
By his late teens, he played guitar and violin in his father's family band at banquets and weddings, alongside his brother James "Steady Roll" Johnson. He also worked with jazz trumpeter Punch Miller
in the city's Storyville
district.
In 1917, Johnson joined a revue that toured England, returning home in 1919 to find that all of his family, except his brother James, had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic.
He and his brother settled in St. Louis
in 1921. The two brothers performed as a duo, and Lonnie also worked on riverboat
s, working in the orchestras of Charlie Creath
and Fate Marable
. In 1925 Lonnie married, and his wife Mary soon began to pursue a blues career in her own right, performing as Mary Johnson
and pursuing a recording career from 1929–1936. She is not to be confused with the later soul
and gospel
singer of the same name. As is often the case with early blues artists, information on Mrs Johnson is often contradictory and confusing. Many online sources give her name before marriage as Mary Smith, and state that she began performing in her teens. However, author James Sallis
gives her single name as Mary Williams, and states that her interest in writing and performing blues material began when she started helping Lonnie write songs, and developed from there. Curiously enough, the two never recorded together. They had six children before their divorce in 1932.
.
To his regret, he was then tagged as a blues artist, and later found it difficult to be regarded as anything else. He later said, "I guess I would have done anything to get recorded – it just happened to be a blues contest, so I sang the blues." Between 1925 and 1932 he made about 130 recordings for the OKeh label (many were good sellers). He was called to New York to record with the leading blues singers of the day including Victoria Spivey
and country blues singer Alger "Texas" Alexander. He also toured with Bessie Smith
's T.O.B.A.
show.
In December 1927, Johnson recorded in Chicago as a guest artist with Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five
, paired with banjoist Johnny St. Cyr
. He played on the sides "I'm Not Rough", "Savoy Blues", and "Hotter Than That." In 1928 he recorded "Hot and Bothered", "Move Over", and "The Mooche" with Duke Ellington
on Okeh records; he also recorded with a group called The Chocolate Dandies. He pioneered the guitar solo on the 1927 track "6/88 Glide" and many of his early recordings showed him playing 12-string guitar solos in a style that influenced such future jazz guitarists as Charlie Christian
and Django Reinhardt
, and gave the instrument new meaning as a jazz voice. He excelled in purely instrumental pieces, some of which he recorded with the white jazz guitarist Eddie Lang
, whom he teamed up with in 1929. These recordings were among the first in history to feature black and white musicians performing together, but Lang was credited as Blind Willie Dunn to disguise the fact.
Much of Johnson's music featured experimental improvisations that would now be categorised as jazz rather than blues. According to blues historian Gérard Herzhaft, Johnson was "undeniably the creator of the guitar solo played note by note with a pick, which has become the standard in jazz, blues, country, and rock". Johnson's style reached both the Delta blues
men and urban players who would adapt and develop his one string solos into the modern electric blues style. However, writer Elijah Wald
has written that, in the 1920s and 1930s, Johnson was best known as a sophisticated and urbane singer rather than an instrumentalist – "Of the forty ads for his records that appeared in the 'Chicago Defender' between 1926 and 1931, not one even mentioned that he played guitar."
Johnson's compositions often depicted the social conditions confronting urban African Americans ("Racketeers' Blues", "Hard Times Ain't Gone Nowhere", "Fine Booze and Heavy Dues"). In his lyrics he captured the nuances of male-female love relationships in a way that went beyond Tin Pan Alley
sentimentalism. His songs displayed an ability to understand the heartaches of others that Johnson saw as the essence of his blues.
After touring with Bessie Smith
in 1929, Johnson moved to Chicago, and recorded for Okeh with stride pianist James P. Johnson
. However, with the temporary demise of the recording industry in the Great Depression
, Johnson was compelled to make a living outside music, working at one point in a steel mill in Peoria, Illinois
. In 1932 he moved again to Cleveland, Ohio
, where he lived for the rest of the decade. There, he played intermittently with the band of vocalist and singer Putney Dandridge, and performed on radio programs.
By the late 1930s, however, he was recording and performing in Chicago for Decca Records
, working with Roosevelt Sykes
and Blind John Davis
among others. In 1939, during a session for the Bluebird
label with pianist Joshua Altheimer
, Johnson used an electric guitar for the first time. He recorded 34 tracks for Bluebird over the next five years, including the hits "He's a Jelly Roll Baker" and "In Love Again".
After World War II, Johnson made the transition to rhythm and blues
, recording for King Records
in Cincinnati, and having a major hit in 1948 with "Tomorrow Night", written by Sam Coslow and Will Grosz. This topped the Billboard "Race Records"
chart for 7 weeks, also made # 19 on the pop charts, and had reported sales of three million copies. A blues ballad
with piano accompaniment and background singers, the song bore little resemblance to much of Johnson's earlier blues and jazz material. The follow-ups "Pleasing You" and "So Tired" were also major R&B hits.
In 1952 Johnson toured England. Tony Donegan, a British musician who played on the same bill, paid tribute to Johnson by changing his name to Lonnie Donegan
.
After returning to the U.S., Johnson moved to Philadelphia. His career had been a roller coaster ride that sometimes took him away from music. In between great musical accomplishments, he had found it necessary to take menial jobs that ranged from working in a steel foundry to mopping floors as a janitor. He gradually dropped out of music again in the 1950s, and took menial janitorial jobs; he was working at Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Hotel in 1959 when WHAT-FM disc jockey Chris Albertson
happened upon him and produced a comeback album, for the Prestige Bluesville Records
label, Blues by Lonnie Johnson. This was followed by other Prestige albums, including one with former Ellington boss, Elmer Snowden
, who had helped Albertson locate Johnson. There followed a Chicago engagement for Johnson at the Playboy Club and this succession of events placed him back on the music scene at a fortuitous time: young audiences were embracing folk music and many veteran performers were stepping out of obscurity. In short order, Lonnie Johnson found himself reunited with Duke Ellington and his orchestra and appearing as special guest at an all-star folk concert, both at Town Hall, New York City City.
In 1961, Johnson was reunited with his old Okeh recording partner, Victoria Spivey, for another Prestige album, Idle Hours, and the two singers performed at Gerdes Folk City. In 1963 he toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival
show, with Muddy Waters
and others, and recorded an album with Otis Spann
in Denmark.
In May 1965, he performed at a club in Toronto before an audience of four people. Two weeks later, his shows at a different club attracted a larger audience and Johnson decided to move to the city. He opened his own club, Home of the Blues, on Toronto's Yorkville Avenue
in 1966, but it was a business failure and Johnson was ultimately fired by the man who became owner. Throughout the rest of decade he recorded and played local clubs in Canada as well as embarking on several regional tours.
In March 1969, he was hit by a car while walking on a sidewalk in Toronto. Johnson was seriously injured, suffering a broken hip and kidney injuries. A benefit concert was held on May 4, 1969, featuring two dozen acts, including Ian and Sylvia
, John Lee Hooker
and Hagood Hardy
. Johnson never fully recovered from his injuries and suffered what was described as a stroke in August. He was able to return to the stage for one performance at Massey Hall
on February 23, 1970, walking with the aid of a cane to sing a couple of songs with Buddy Guy
and receiving a standing ovation. He died on June 16, 1970 and was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery
in Toronto. At the time, Johnson was reported to have been "virtually broke."
In 1993, Smithsonian Folkways
released The Complete Folkways Recordings, Johnson's anthology of music on Folkways Records
. He had been featured on several compilation blues albums, on Folkways, beginning in the 1960s, but had never released a solo album on the label in his lifetime.
Johnson was posthumously inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1997.
, starring Alessandro Nivola
, David Oyelow, Chi McBride
and TJ Hassan
as Johnson. The film was directed by Jerry Zaks.
One of Elvis Presley
's earliest recordings was Johnson's blues ballad
, "Tomorrow Night" written by Sam Coslow and Will Grosz, which was also recorded by LaVern Baker
. In 1957, it was also recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis
.
In the liner notes for Biograph
, Dylan describes his encounters with Johnson in New York City. "I was lucky to meet Lonnie Johnson at the same club I was working and I must say he greatly influenced me. You can hear it in that first record. I mean Corrina, Corrina...that's pretty much Lonnie Johnson. I used to watch him every chance I got and sometimes he'd let me play with him. I think he and Tampa Red
and of course Scrapper Blackwell
, that's my favorite style of guitar playing." Also, Bob Dylan
wrote about the performing method he learned from Robert Johnson in Chronicles, Vol. 1. Dylan thinks Robert Johnson
had learned a lot from Lonnie. Also some of Robert's songs are seen as new versions of songs recorded by Lonnie.
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar
Jazz guitar
The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of guitar or to the variety of guitar playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed "jazz"...
and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solo
Guitar solo
In popular music, a guitar solo is a melodic passage, section, or entire piece of music written for an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. Guitar solos, which often contain varying degrees of improvisation, are used in many styles of popular music such as blues, jazz, rock and metal styles such...
s. Johnson was not only one of the few black blues musicians invited to be 'guest featured' on a number of jazz recording sessions, he was also one of the only classic 1920's blues artists to have a revived a high-charting career after WWII.
Early career
Johnson was born in Orleans Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in a family of musicians. He studied violin, piano and guitar as a child, and learned to play various other instruments including the mandolin, but concentrated on the guitar throughout his professional career. "There was music all around us," he recalled, "and in my family you'd better play something, even if you just banged on a tin can."By his late teens, he played guitar and violin in his father's family band at banquets and weddings, alongside his brother James "Steady Roll" Johnson. He also worked with jazz trumpeter Punch Miller
Punch Miller
Ernest Miller aka Punch Miller or Kid Punch Miller , was a Dixieland jazz trumpeter.Miller was born in Raceland, Louisiana. He was known in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he was based from 1919 to 1927 when he moved Chicago...
in the city's Storyville
Storyville
Storyville was the red-light district of New Orleans, Louisiana, from 1897 through 1917. Locals usually simply referred to the area as The District.-History:...
district.
In 1917, Johnson joined a revue that toured England, returning home in 1919 to find that all of his family, except his brother James, had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic.
He and his brother settled in St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
in 1921. The two brothers performed as a duo, and Lonnie also worked on riverboat
Riverboat
A riverboat is a ship built boat designed for inland navigation on lakes, rivers, and artificial waterways. They are generally equipped and outfitted as work boats in one of the carrying trades, for freight or people transport, including luxury units constructed for entertainment enterprises, such...
s, working in the orchestras of Charlie Creath
Charlie Creath
Charles Cyril "Charlie" Creath was an American jazz trumpeter, saxophonist, accordionist, and bandleader....
and Fate Marable
Fate Marable
Fate Marable was a jazz pianist and bandleader.Marable was born in Paducah, Kentucky, and learned piano from his mother. At age 17, he began playing on the steam boats plying the Mississippi River...
. In 1925 Lonnie married, and his wife Mary soon began to pursue a blues career in her own right, performing as Mary Johnson
Mary Johnson (singer)
Mary Johnson was an American classic female blues singer, accordionist and songwriter. Her most noted tracks were "Dream Daddy Blues" and "Western Union Blues." She wrote a number of her own tracks including "Barrel House Flat Blues", "Key To The Mountain Blues" and "Black Men Blues." Johnson...
and pursuing a recording career from 1929–1936. She is not to be confused with the later soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
and gospel
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
singer of the same name. As is often the case with early blues artists, information on Mrs Johnson is often contradictory and confusing. Many online sources give her name before marriage as Mary Smith, and state that she began performing in her teens. However, author James Sallis
James Sallis
James Sallis is an American crime writer, poet and musician, best known for his series of novels featuring the character Lew Griffin and set in New Orleans, and for his 2005 novel Drive, which was adapted into a 2011 film of the same name.He is the brother of philosopher John Sallis...
gives her single name as Mary Williams, and states that her interest in writing and performing blues material began when she started helping Lonnie write songs, and developed from there. Curiously enough, the two never recorded together. They had six children before their divorce in 1932.
Success in the 1920s and 1930s
In 1925, Johnson entered and won a blues contest at the Booker T. Washington Theatre in St. Louis, the prize being a recording contract with Okeh RecordsOkeh Records
Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918. From 1926 on, it was a subsidiary of Columbia Records.-History:...
.
To his regret, he was then tagged as a blues artist, and later found it difficult to be regarded as anything else. He later said, "I guess I would have done anything to get recorded – it just happened to be a blues contest, so I sang the blues." Between 1925 and 1932 he made about 130 recordings for the OKeh label (many were good sellers). He was called to New York to record with the leading blues singers of the day including Victoria Spivey
Victoria Spivey
Victoria Spivey was an American blues singer and songwriter. She is best known for her recordings of "Dope Head Blues" and "Organ Grinder Blues", and Spivey variously worked with her sister, Addie "Sweet Pease" Spivey, and with Bob Dylan, Lonnie Johnson, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence...
and country blues singer Alger "Texas" Alexander. He also toured with Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...
's T.O.B.A.
Theater Owners Bookers Association
Theater Owners Booking Association, or T.O.B.A., was the vaudeville circuit for African American performers in the 1920s and 1930s. The theaters all had white owners and collaborated in booking jazz, blues, comedians, and other performers for black audiences...
show.
In December 1927, Johnson recorded in Chicago as a guest artist with Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five
Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five
The Hot Five was Louis Armstrong's first jazz recording band led under his own name.It was a typical New Orleans jazz band in instrumentation, consisting of trumpet, clarinet, and trombone backed by a rhythm section...
, paired with banjoist Johnny St. Cyr
Johnny St. Cyr
Johnny St. Cyr was an American jazz banjoist and guitarist.St. Cyr was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is most commonly remembered as a member of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven bands....
. He played on the sides "I'm Not Rough", "Savoy Blues", and "Hotter Than That." In 1928 he recorded "Hot and Bothered", "Move Over", and "The Mooche" with Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
on Okeh records; he also recorded with a group called The Chocolate Dandies. He pioneered the guitar solo on the 1927 track "6/88 Glide" and many of his early recordings showed him playing 12-string guitar solos in a style that influenced such future jazz guitarists as Charlie Christian
Charlie Christian
Charles Henry "Charlie" Christian was an American swing and jazz guitarist.Christian was an important early performer on the electric guitar, and is cited as a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra...
and Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...
, and gave the instrument new meaning as a jazz voice. He excelled in purely instrumental pieces, some of which he recorded with the white jazz guitarist Eddie Lang
Eddie Lang
Eddie Lang was an American jazz guitarist, regarded as the Father of Jazz Guitar. He played a Gibson L-4 and L-5 guitar, providing great influence for many guitarists, including Django Reinhardt.-Biography:...
, whom he teamed up with in 1929. These recordings were among the first in history to feature black and white musicians performing together, but Lang was credited as Blind Willie Dunn to disguise the fact.
Much of Johnson's music featured experimental improvisations that would now be categorised as jazz rather than blues. According to blues historian Gérard Herzhaft, Johnson was "undeniably the creator of the guitar solo played note by note with a pick, which has become the standard in jazz, blues, country, and rock". Johnson's style reached both the Delta blues
Delta blues
The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south, Helena, Arkansas in the west to the Yazoo River on the east. The...
men and urban players who would adapt and develop his one string solos into the modern electric blues style. However, writer Elijah Wald
Elijah Wald
Indeed, his first book was a collaboration with his biologist mother entitled Exploding the Gene Myth, in which they wrote that "The myth of the all-powerful gene is based on flawed science that discounts the environment in which we and our genes exist." "There are no definitive histories," he...
has written that, in the 1920s and 1930s, Johnson was best known as a sophisticated and urbane singer rather than an instrumentalist – "Of the forty ads for his records that appeared in the 'Chicago Defender' between 1926 and 1931, not one even mentioned that he played guitar."
Johnson's compositions often depicted the social conditions confronting urban African Americans ("Racketeers' Blues", "Hard Times Ain't Gone Nowhere", "Fine Booze and Heavy Dues"). In his lyrics he captured the nuances of male-female love relationships in a way that went beyond Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
sentimentalism. His songs displayed an ability to understand the heartaches of others that Johnson saw as the essence of his blues.
After touring with Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...
in 1929, Johnson moved to Chicago, and recorded for Okeh with stride pianist James P. Johnson
James P. Johnson
James P. Johnson was an American pianist and composer...
. However, with the temporary demise of the recording industry in the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, Johnson was compelled to make a living outside music, working at one point in a steel mill in Peoria, Illinois
Peoria, Illinois
Peoria is the largest city on the Illinois River and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, in the United States. It is named after the Peoria tribe. As of the 2010 census, the city was the seventh-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 115,007, and is the third-most populated...
. In 1932 he moved again to Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
, where he lived for the rest of the decade. There, he played intermittently with the band of vocalist and singer Putney Dandridge, and performed on radio programs.
By the late 1930s, however, he was recording and performing in Chicago for Decca Records
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
, working with Roosevelt Sykes
Roosevelt Sykes
Roosevelt Sykes was an American blues musician, also known as "The Honeydripper". He was a successful and prolific cigar-chomping blues piano player, whose rollicking thundering boogie-woogie was highly influential.-Career:Born in Elmar, Arkansas, Sykes grew up near Helena but at age 15, went on...
and Blind John Davis
Blind John Davis
Blind John Davis was an African American, blues, jazz and boogie-woogie pianist and singer. He is best remembered for his recordings including "A Little Every Day" and "Everybody's Boogie".-Biography:...
among others. In 1939, during a session for the Bluebird
Bluebird Records
Bluebird Records is a sub-label of RCA Victor Records originally created in 1932 to counter the American Record Company in the "3 records for a dollar" market. Along with ARC's Perfect Records, Melotone Records and Romeo Records, and the independent US Decca label, Bluebird became one of the best...
label with pianist Joshua Altheimer
Joshua Altheimer
Joshua Altheimer Although some sources give his date of death as February 18, 1940, that cannot be correct as he is known to have recorded later that year. was an American pianist who is remembered for accompanying Big Bill Broonzy, Lonnie Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson and others on influential...
, Johnson used an electric guitar for the first time. He recorded 34 tracks for Bluebird over the next five years, including the hits "He's a Jelly Roll Baker" and "In Love Again".
Later career
After World War II, Johnson made the transition to rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
, recording for King Records
King Records (USA)
King Records is an American record label, started in 1943 by Syd Nathan and originally headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.-History:At first it specialized in country music, at the time still known as "hillbilly music." King advertised, "If it's a King, It's a Hillbilly -- If it's a Hillbilly, it's a...
in Cincinnati, and having a major hit in 1948 with "Tomorrow Night", written by Sam Coslow and Will Grosz. This topped the Billboard "Race Records"
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...
chart for 7 weeks, also made # 19 on the pop charts, and had reported sales of three million copies. A blues ballad
Blues ballad
The term blues ballad is used to refer to a specific form of popular music which fused Anglo-American and Afro-American styles from the late 19th century onwards...
with piano accompaniment and background singers, the song bore little resemblance to much of Johnson's earlier blues and jazz material. The follow-ups "Pleasing You" and "So Tired" were also major R&B hits.
In 1952 Johnson toured England. Tony Donegan, a British musician who played on the same bill, paid tribute to Johnson by changing his name to Lonnie Donegan
Lonnie Donegan
Anthony James "Lonnie" Donegan MBE was a skiffle musician, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is known as the "King of Skiffle" and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s...
.
After returning to the U.S., Johnson moved to Philadelphia. His career had been a roller coaster ride that sometimes took him away from music. In between great musical accomplishments, he had found it necessary to take menial jobs that ranged from working in a steel foundry to mopping floors as a janitor. He gradually dropped out of music again in the 1950s, and took menial janitorial jobs; he was working at Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Hotel in 1959 when WHAT-FM disc jockey Chris Albertson
Chris Albertson
Christiern Gunnar Albertson is a New York City-based jazz journalist, writer and record producer.He was born in Reykjavík and educated in Iceland, Denmark and England before studying commercial art in Copenhagen...
happened upon him and produced a comeback album, for the Prestige Bluesville Records
Bluesville Records
Bluesville Records is a subsidiary of Prestige Records, launched in the 1960s with the primary purpose of documenting the work of the older classic bluesmen passed over by the changing audience...
label, Blues by Lonnie Johnson. This was followed by other Prestige albums, including one with former Ellington boss, Elmer Snowden
Elmer Snowden
Elmer Snowden was a banjo player of the jazz age. He also played guitar and, in the early stages of his career, all the reed instruments. He contributed greatly to jazz in its early days as both a player and a bandleader, and is responsible for launching the careers of many top musicians...
, who had helped Albertson locate Johnson. There followed a Chicago engagement for Johnson at the Playboy Club and this succession of events placed him back on the music scene at a fortuitous time: young audiences were embracing folk music and many veteran performers were stepping out of obscurity. In short order, Lonnie Johnson found himself reunited with Duke Ellington and his orchestra and appearing as special guest at an all-star folk concert, both at Town Hall, New York City City.
In 1961, Johnson was reunited with his old Okeh recording partner, Victoria Spivey, for another Prestige album, Idle Hours, and the two singers performed at Gerdes Folk City. In 1963 he toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival
American Folk Blues Festival
The American Folk Blues Festival was a music festival that toured Europe beginning in 1962.German jazz publicist Joachim-Ernst Berendt first had the idea of bringing original African-American blues performers to Europe. Jazz had become very popular, and rock and roll was just gaining a foothold,...
show, with Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
and others, and recorded an album with Otis Spann
Otis Spann
Otis Spann was an American blues musician, who many consider the leading postwar Chicago blues pianist.-Career:Born in Jackson, Mississippi, United States, Spann became known for his distinct piano style....
in Denmark.
In May 1965, he performed at a club in Toronto before an audience of four people. Two weeks later, his shows at a different club attracted a larger audience and Johnson decided to move to the city. He opened his own club, Home of the Blues, on Toronto's Yorkville Avenue
Yorkville, Toronto
Yorkville is a district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, well known for its shopping. It is a former village, annexed by the City of Toronto. It is roughly bounded by Bloor Street to the south, Davenport Road to the north, Yonge Street to the east and Avenue Road to the west, and is considered part of...
in 1966, but it was a business failure and Johnson was ultimately fired by the man who became owner. Throughout the rest of decade he recorded and played local clubs in Canada as well as embarking on several regional tours.
In March 1969, he was hit by a car while walking on a sidewalk in Toronto. Johnson was seriously injured, suffering a broken hip and kidney injuries. A benefit concert was held on May 4, 1969, featuring two dozen acts, including Ian and Sylvia
Ian and Sylvia
Ian & Sylvia were a Canadian folk and country music duo which consisted of Ian and Sylvia Tyson, née Fricker. They began performing together in 1959, married in 1964, and divorced and stopped performing together in 1975.-Early lives:...
, John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...
and Hagood Hardy
Hagood Hardy
Hugh Hagood Hardy, CM was a Canadian composer, pianist, and vibraphonist. He is best known for the 1975 single, "The Homecoming", originally created as music to a 1972 TV commercial for Salada tea, and for his soundtrack to the Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea films.Born in Angola,...
. Johnson never fully recovered from his injuries and suffered what was described as a stroke in August. He was able to return to the stage for one performance at Massey Hall
Massey Hall
Massey Hall is a venerable performing arts theatre in the Garden District of downtown Toronto. The theatre originally was designed to seat 3,500 patrons but, after extensive renovations in the 1940s, now seats up to 2,765....
on February 23, 1970, walking with the aid of a cane to sing a couple of songs with Buddy Guy
Buddy Guy
George "Buddy" Guy is an American blues and jazz guitarist and singer. He is a critically acclaimed artist who has established himself as a pioneer of the Chicago blues sound, and has served as an influence to some of the most notable musicians of his generation...
and receiving a standing ovation. He died on June 16, 1970 and was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery
Mount Hope Catholic Cemetery
Mount Hope Catholic Cemetery at 305 Erskine Avenue in Toronto, Ontario, Canada was consecrated on July 9, 1898 by Roman Catholic Archbishop John Walsh. The first burial occurred on March 27, 1900. By the end of the 20th Century, the cemetery was full, holding the remains of more than 76,000 persons...
in Toronto. At the time, Johnson was reported to have been "virtually broke."
In 1993, Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways...
released The Complete Folkways Recordings, Johnson's anthology of music on Folkways Records
Folkways Records
Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...
. He had been featured on several compilation blues albums, on Folkways, beginning in the 1960s, but had never released a solo album on the label in his lifetime.
Johnson was posthumously inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1997.
Biopic depiction
Lonnie Johnson is featured as a character in the Film Who Do You Love? (2008 film)Who Do You Love? (2008 film)
Who Do You Love? is a 2008 film named after the Bo Diddley song "Who Do You Love?". It is also known by its working title of Chess. It is a biopic of the record producer Leonard Chess and was directed by Jerry Zaks and written by Peter Martin Wortmann and Robert Conte. Leonard Chess was played by...
, starring Alessandro Nivola
Alessandro Nivola
Alessandro Antine Nivola is an American actor, perhaps best known for his roles in the films Best Laid Plans, Jurassic Park III, Face/Off, and the first two films of the Goal! trilogy.-Personal life:...
, David Oyelow, Chi McBride
Chi McBride
Kenneth "Chi" McBride is an American actor. He starred as Steven Harper on the series Boston Public, as Emerson Cod on Pushing Daisies, and recently appeared in Fox's drama Human Target.-Early life:...
and TJ Hassan
TJ Hassan
TJ Hassan is a film, television and stage actor and musician, perhaps best known for several supporting roles both in independent and mainstream films and television.- Career :...
as Johnson. The film was directed by Jerry Zaks.
Influence
Lonnie Johnson's early recordings are the first guitar recordings that display a single-note soloing style with use of string bending and vibrato. While it cannot be proven that this contains the influence of earlier players who did not record, it is the origin of Blues and Rock solo guitar. Johnson's influence is obvious in Django Reinhardt, T-Bone Walker and virtually all electric blues guitar players.One of Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
's earliest recordings was Johnson's blues ballad
Blues ballad
The term blues ballad is used to refer to a specific form of popular music which fused Anglo-American and Afro-American styles from the late 19th century onwards...
, "Tomorrow Night" written by Sam Coslow and Will Grosz, which was also recorded by LaVern Baker
LaVern Baker
LaVern Baker was an American rhythm and blues singer, who had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her most successful records were "Tweedlee Dee" , "Jim Dandy" , and "I Cried a Tear" .-Early life:She was born Delores LaVern Baker in Chicago, Illinois...
. In 1957, it was also recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...
.
In the liner notes for Biograph
Biograph
Biograph may refer to:* An early form of the cinematograph, made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1928* Biograph , a 1985 box set compiling music by Bob Dylan...
, Dylan describes his encounters with Johnson in New York City. "I was lucky to meet Lonnie Johnson at the same club I was working and I must say he greatly influenced me. You can hear it in that first record. I mean Corrina, Corrina...that's pretty much Lonnie Johnson. I used to watch him every chance I got and sometimes he'd let me play with him. I think he and Tampa Red
Tampa Red
Tampa Red , born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an American Chicago blues musician....
and of course Scrapper Blackwell
Scrapper Blackwell
Francis Hillman "Scrapper" Blackwell was an American blues guitarist and singer; best known as half of the guitar-piano duo he formed with Leroy Carr in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was an acoustic single-note picker in the Chicago blues and Piedmont blues style, with some critics noting...
, that's my favorite style of guitar playing." Also, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
wrote about the performing method he learned from Robert Johnson in Chronicles, Vol. 1. Dylan thinks Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson
Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings from 1936–37 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given...
had learned a lot from Lonnie. Also some of Robert's songs are seen as new versions of songs recorded by Lonnie.
External links
- Discography and brief biography
- Biography
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKOiHGEFDr0&feature=related cover of "Blue Ghost Blues" by Loren MazzaCane Connors and Suzanne Langille.