JOHNSON

Lonnie Johnson, known both as a jazz innovator and a key figure in defining the genre of blues guitar, was greatly responsible for the shift in popular music’s emphasis from the banjo to the acoustic guitar. He is also credited with being the first player to bring single-line guitar countermelodies to jazz. In the early days of blues recording, when most artists were from rural areas or small towns, Lonnie Johnson stood out as one of the few recorded blues musicians of urban origin. Unlike Blind Lemon JEFFERSON, who began recording about the same time, Johnson was not a street performer but a professional musician who recorded from 1925 until the mid-1960s. Blues legend Robert JOHNSON thought so much of Johnson’s ability that he reportedly told people he was related to Lonnie Johnson.

Alonzo Johnson was one of about a dozen children born to a New Orleans family; while various birth dates have been reported, February 8, 1889 seems to be the most reliable. The first instrument he learned to play was the violin, but he soon also mastered the guitar, piano, mandolin, harmonica, and kazoo. Johnson dropped out of school when he was about 14 to concentrate on his music, and by 1910 he was frequently playing violin solo in the New Orleans’ red-light district. In 1917, he toured the United States with a vaudeville show and then travelled in Europe, working revues in London. When he returned to New Orleans, he was devastated to learn that most of his family had been killed in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. He moved to St. Louis, where he worked on riverboats, and then toured during the early 1920s as a solo act.

In 1925 Johnson won a talent contest for blues singers that got him a seven-year contract with the Okeh recording company. He became the label’s staff musician, cutting an estimated 130 sides during his seven years there. Louis ARMSTRONG sought him out to record several tunes, and the next year Johnson cut several sides with Duke ELLINGTON’S band. Among his first original blues recordings were “Away Down in the Alley Blues” and “Stompin’ ’Em Along Slow.”

During the 1930s, he divided his time between recording sessions, radio work, and club appearances. Despite his prolific song output, Johnson had to take non-music jobs, often menial and physically demanding, to make a living. As a result, he made many “comebacks” during his career—for Decca in 1937, for King in 1947, and for Bluesville in 1960, but all were marked by the same timeless signature sound. Johnson’s popularity was boosted in the mid-1940s, when he took up the amplified guitar and contemporary ballad style, which produced the hit “Tomorrow Night” (1948).

Johnson made a lengthy tour of Britain in 1952, but mostly lived and played in Chicago, then in Cincinnati, before settling in Philadelphia. By the end of the decade he had quit professional music and was working as a hotel janitor. A 1960s comeback to music included a European tour with the American Folk Blues Festival. In 1965, he settled in Toronto, where he was a popular figure on the club scene until his death after suffering a stroke in June 1970.

Johnson was at his best playing urban and country blues and often sang in hushed tones about the complexity of human relationships. He was the first to use his guitar as a “crying” counterpoint to lyrics, a technique elaborated on by T-Bone WALKER and B. B. KING. Johnson was a major transitional figure in American guitar styles. Everything that came before, such as complex patterns and ragtime blues, was brought together in his highly advanced style, and much that followed was a product of it. By his own count, Johnson recorded 572 songs during his long career, including basic blues, hokums, jazz instrumentais and rhythm and blues.

Stan Hieronymus

LONNIE

JOHNSON