Lonnie Johnson

Infobox musical artist
Name = Lonnie Johnson


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Background = solo_singer
Birth_name = Alonzo Johnson
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Born = Birth date|1899|2|8
Died = death date and age|1970|6|16|1899|2|8
Origin = New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Instrument = Guitar, Vocals, violin
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Genre = St. Louis blues
Country blues
Piedmont blues
Blues revival
Jazz blues
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Label = Okeh
Bluebird
King
Bluesville
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Alonzo [Some online sources state "Alfonzo", incorrectly.] "Lonnie" Johnson (February 8, 1899 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll. There is some dispute over the year of his birth, and 1894 is what appears on his passport.Fact|date=June 2007 Some other sources give 1889.] – 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 solosGérard Herzhaft, Encyclopedia of the Blues, 1979] .

Biography

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." [Conversation w. Chris Albertson - "Bluesland" - Edited by Pete Welding and Toby Byron. Dutton 1991, ISBN 0-525-93375-1]

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 [http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608000968/Lonnie-Johnson.html Biographical article by John Cohassey at www.musicianguide.com] ] . 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 [http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608004726/Lonnie-Johnson.html Biographical article by James M. Manheim at www.musicianguide.com] ] . The two brothers performed as a duo, and Lonnie also worked on riverboats, working in the orchestras of Charlie Creath and Fate Marable. In 1925 Lonnie married Mary Smith (i.e. Mary Johnson, a blues singer on her own right, who recorded from 1929 until 1936 - curiously enough never with Lonnie Johnson), with whom he had six children before their divorce in 1932.

uccess 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 Records.Barlow, William. "Looking Up At Down": The Emergence of Blues Culture". Temple University Press (1989), pp. 259-63. ISBN 0-87722-583-4.] 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." [http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608004726/Lonnie-Johnson.html Biographical article by James M. Manheim at www.musicianguide.com] ] Between 1925 and 1932 he made about 130 recordings for the Okeh label. 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 1927, Johnson recorded in Chicago as a guest artist with Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, paired with banjoist Johnny St. Cyr. In 1928 he recorded with Duke Ellington, as well as with a group, 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. [http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608004726/Lonnie-Johnson.html Biographical article by James M. Manheim at www.musicianguide.com] ]

Much of Johnson's music featured experimental improvisations that would now be categorised as jazz rather than blues. According to blues historian Gérard Herzhaft,Gérard Herzhaft, Encyclopedia of the Blues, 1979] 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 bluesmen and urban players who would adapt and develop his one string solos into the modern electric blues style. However, writer Elijah Wald [Elijah Wald, "Escaping the Delta : Robert Johnson and the invention of the blues", 2004, ISBN 978-0-06-052427-2] has noted 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 [http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608004726/Lonnie-Johnson.html Biographical article by James M. Manheim at www.musicianguide.com] ] . 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, recording for King Records in Cincinnati, and having a major hit with "Tomorrow Night" in 1948. 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. [http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608004726/Lonnie-Johnson.html Biographical article by James M. Manheim at www.musicianguide.com] ] A ballad with piano accompaniment and background singers, this 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 [Joel Whitburn, "Top R&B Singles 1942-1995", ISBN 0-89820-115-2] .

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.

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 1965, he landed a series of dates in Toronto, Canada, and decided to stay there, opening his own club, Home of the Blues, in 1966. Throughout the decade he recorded and played local clubs in Canada as well as embarking on several regional tours.

He died in Toronto on June 16, 1970, of complications resulting from a 1969 auto accident.

Johnson was posthumously inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1997.

Biopic Depiction

Lonnie Johnson is featured in the Film "Who Do You Love", starring Alessandro Nivola, David Oyelow, Chi McBride and new comer TJ Hassan as Lonnie Johnson. The film is directed by Jerry Zaks. The film features Lonnie Johnson as one of the first guitarists approached by Leonard Chess to play with Andrew Tibbs in recording sessions. The film is scheduled for release in 2009

Influence

One of Elvis Presley's earliest recordings was Johnson's blues ballad, "Tomorrow Night", which was also recorded by LaVern Baker. In 1957, it was also recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis.

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.

References

ee also

*List of blues musicians
*List of jazz musicians

External links

* [http://www.redhotjazz.com/ljohnson.html Discography and brief biography]
* [http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608000968/Lonnie-Johnson.html Biography]

Persondata
NAME = Johnson, Lonnie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES = Johnson, Alonzo (birth name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION = American blues and jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH = February 8, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH = New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
DATE OF DEATH = June 16, 1970
PLACE OF DEATH = Ontario, Canada