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Preaching the blues
I discovered Jimmy Johnson one day in the mid-1990s in a blues and jazz second-hand CD shop in the Latin Quarter of Paris. My eye got attracted by the cover where Johnson is holding a big axe (I smiled at the symbol : axe is a slang word for guitar) and by the album's title, "Johnson's Whacks", so I bought it, just knowing it was electric blues but ignoring it was one of the best recordings of this Johnson. A perfect introduction. From then on, I always liked him. I later got some of his previous and following albums and was never disappointed even if like many of his fellow bluesmen, he had his downs too. This 2019 album is certainly not gonna make me change my mind.
James Earl Thompson was born in November 1928 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In his teenage years, he befriended Matt “Guitar” Murphy although Johnson himself didn’t seriously take up guitar until moving to Chicago in 1950 at the age of 21, living at his uncle, next door to… Magic Sam ! Until 1959, he worked as a welder, and bought his first guitar at the late age of 28 ! Two of his younger brothers had joined him in Chicago and had already gone seriously into music : Syl was a soul and blues musician and Mack was Magic Sam's bassist.
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Jimmy Johnson (left), Otis Rush & Albert Collins
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From 1960, while blues was losing its appeal to black audiences, he changed his last name to Johnson like his brother Syl had done, and established himself as a professional musician on the flourishing and financially more profitable R'n'B scene, backing artists like Otis Clay or Denise LaSalle with his own band, and occasionally recording a single. Meanwhile he had opportunities to play with blues artists like Magic Sam, two Kings (Freddie and Albert), Otis Rush or Eddy Clearwater... He finally turned seriously to blues in 1974 when Jimmy Dawkins asked him to be his rhythm guitarist and then toured with him and later with Otis Rush, particularly on his 1975 Japan tour, appearing on Rush' live album "So Many Roads" recorded in Tokyo.After just a few recording experiences (with Luther Johnson in 1975, and on Alligator Records' "Living Chicago Blues Volume 1" in 1978), he was already fifty when finally his first album was released in 1978 on the MCM label ("Tobacco Road" recorded live in 1977), followed the next year by the famous "Johnson's Whacks" on Delmark, his first "real" studio work and a master-strike. From then on, his career kept ascending, though a bit chaotically, through albums, clubs and festivals performance and tours. In December 1988, Johnson was injured and his bassist Larry Exum and keyboardist St. James Bryant were killed in a road accident while he was driving the band's van through Indiana. The blow took him two years to overcome.  |
B.B. King, George Benson, Jimmy Johnson & Buddy Guy
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He went back in studio only in the fall of 1990 to record "Living The Life" in Paris. After three more studio albums, he and his brother Syl recorded "Two Johnsons Are Better Than One" in 2001. In 2019, he released "Every Day of Your Life", his first album in fifteen years. He was 90 (!) and the album's title sounds like a lifetime assessment by an old man. Three years later, on January 31, 2022, Johnson who was sometimes dubbed "The Bar Room Preacher" (from his 1983 album), died at the age of 93. Six days later, his brother Syl followed him… "Every Day of Your Life" is a masterpiece, quite energetic despite Johnson's age, filled with exciting Chicago blues guitar, featuring great songs and a solid groove. Johnson was still a prolific songwriter with five original titles of his own, the covers comprising songs by B.B. King, Fenton Robinson, Percy Mayfield and Bobby Blue Bland (a song written by Don Robey aka Deadric Malone, producer and founder of the Peacock and Duke labels). Some forty years after "Johnson's Whacks", he'd come full circle, back on Delmark.
Backed by skilled musicians (notably pianist Roosevelt Purifoy, organist "Brother" John Kattke, and bassists J.R. Fuller and Curt Bley), Johnson’s elegant, slicing but fluid guitar style remains powerful and gripping throughout the nine tracks with unpredictable elasticity, a brilliant example of the best kind of Chicago blues guitar, and age hasn't changed his high-pitched soulful voice a bit neither. When hearing such a thrilling album one wanders how Johnson didn't reach a fame equivalent to that of some of his legendary contemporaries like Buddy Guy, Luther Allison or even a B.B. King...
In all styles, Johnson shows a rare mastery, be it on funky numbers like "Every Day Of Your Life" and "Rattlesnake", on the hard-driving version of B.B. King's "I Need You So Bad" (featuring a very appealing Roosevelt Purifoy on piano), on the unexpected soul reggae "My Ring" sounding almost like a Jimmy Cliff work, on Fenton Robinson's soul blues "Somebody Loan Me A Dime", on the churning originals "Down In The Valley", one of my favorite tracks on the album, and "Better When It's Wet", on the Percy Mayfield's slow blues "Strange Things Happening", or on the Bobby "Blue" Bland’s gospel-infected "Lead Me On" where Johnson is... on piano.
A great and magnificent piece of Chicago blues of the best kind, I don't know how to say it better ! ■
Jimmy Johnson's discography
→ Jimmy Johnson & Luther Johnson : Ma Bea's Rock (MCM Records, 1975) → Living Chicago Blues Volume 1 (Alligator Records, 1978)
→ Tobacco Road (MCM Records, 1978)
→ Johnson's Whacks (Delmark, 1979)
→ North/South (Delmark, 1982)
→ Bar Room Preacher (Alligator Records, 1983)
→ Jimmy Johnson Featuring John Watkins : Heap See (Blue Phoenix, 1987)
→ Livin' The Life (Black & Blue, 1993)
→ I'm a Jockey (Verve Records, 1994)
→ Every Road Ends Somewhere (Ruf Records, 1998)
→ Pepper's Hangout (Delmark, 2000)
→ Jimmy & Syl Johnson : Two Johnsons Are Better Than One (Evangeline Records, 2001)
→ Heap See (Black & Blue, 2002)
→ Jimmy Johnson & Chicago Dave Blues Band : Brothers Live (Brambus Records, 2004)
→ Every Day Of Your Life (Delmark Records, 2019)
Live videos
● A Delmark retrospective : Jimmy Johnson Band : "It Serves Me Right To Suffer" (1983); Jimmy Johnson with Dave Specter Band : "Feel So Bad" (2011); Jimmy Johnson with the Chris Cain Band : "Cold Cold Feeling" (2015); Jimmy Johnson : "So Many Roads" (2019) : https://youtu.be/vUjTadghOOg ● Jimmy Johnson & Billy Branch : ● With Billy Branch and John Primer, Chicago Blues Bootcamp, Evanston, Illinois, 2020 :
[with Thibault Ripault : guitar - Antoine Escalier : bass - Fabrice Bessouat : drums.]
[Anthony Stelmaszack & Xavier Pillac, guitar - Julien Brunetaud : keyboards - Antoine Escalier,bass - Fabrice Bessouat, drums.]
● Dax Motors'n'Blues Fest., 2015 :
[Anthony Stelmaszack & Xavier Pillac, guitar - Julien Brunetaud : keyboards - Antoine Escalier,bass - Fabrice Bessouat, drums.]
● "Cold Cold Feeling", with Chris Cain Band, Biscuits and Blues, San Francisco, 2015 (Steve Evans, bass. Greg Rahn, keys. Mick Mestek, drums) : https://youtu.be/3_ltbhLJIVo  |
With Dave Specter (left)
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● With Sam Burckhardt and The Dave Specter Band., Lucerne Blues Festival, Switzerland, 2014 : https://youtu.be/v6fc4S_30oI[with Mike Wheeler & Kirk Fletcher (guitar), Larry Williams (bass) Pooky Styx (drums).]
● B.L.U.E.S., Chicago, 2012 :
● Chicago Blues Festival, Léognan, France, 2005 (with Eddie King & Chico Banks, guitar. Jesse Slim Cross, bass. Melvin Pookie Carlisle, drums. Mary Lane, vocal) : https://youtu.be/t8pO4S6bOUA Jimmy Johnson, 1928-2022
Backed by skilled musicians (notably pianist Roosevelt Purifoy, organist "Brother" John Kattke, and bassists J.R. Fuller and Curt Bley), Johnson’s elegant, slicing but fluid guitar style remains powerful and gripping throughout the nine tracks with unpredictable elasticity, a brilliant example of the best kind of Chicago blues guitar, and age hasn't changed his high-pitched soulful voice a bit neither. When hearing such a thrilling album one wanders how Johnson didn't reach a fame equivalent to that of some of his legendary contemporaries like Buddy Guy, Luther Allison or even a B.B. King...
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