An Appreciation of Lonnie Johnson
Not the guy who invented the Super Soaker
In his memoir (Chronicles: Volume One) Bob Dylan said this about his early (circa 1963) musical transformation:
“This style had been shown to me in the early 60’s by Lonnie Johnson. …Lonnie took me aside one night and showed me a style of playing based on an odd rather even numbered system, saying “ this might help you.” He had me play chords and he demonstrated how to do it…It’s a highly controlled system of playing and relates to the notes of a scale, how they combine numerically, how they form melodies out of triplets and are axiomatic to the rhythm and the chord changes. I never used the style..but now all of a sudden it came back to me, and I realized that this way of playing would revitalize my world. I understood the rules and critical elements because Lonnie had shown them to me so crystal clear.”
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Ok, so I bet many readers are saying who is this Lonnie Johnson?
I argue here that Lonnie Johnson is the most influential musician on currently the most popular instrument in music, and that he is the bridge between blues style guitar and jazz style guitar. His influence on Rock music guitar is substantial.
From allmusic.com :
“Blues guitar simply would not have developed in the manner that it did if not for Lonnie Johnson. He was there to help define the instrument's future within the genre and the genre's future itself at the very beginning, his melodic conception so far advanced from most of his prewar peers as to inhabit a plane all his own. For more than 40 years, Johnson played blues, jazz, and ballads his way; he was a true blues originator whose influence hung heavy on a host of subsequent blues immortals.
Johnson's extreme versatility doubtless stemmed in great part from growing up in the musically diverse Crescent City. Violin caught his ear initially, but he eventually made the guitar his passion, developing a style that was fluid and inexorably melodic.”
Lonnie appears on a great variety of recordings. He played on some early Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington records. He wrote and recorded a number of songs, sometimes singing, sometimes not, and sometimes with a band. His series of instrumental duets with Eddie Lang in the late 1920s are extraordinary. His recording career spanned the beginning of recorded music until the 1960’s, more than forty years.
If you have seen the lists of “greatest guitarists of all time”, you will very seldom see Lonnie Johnson on those lists. e.g. Rolling Stone 2023, Guitar World.
You will see on those lists, BB King, Chuck Berry, T-Bone Walker, Mark Knopfler, Ry Cooder, Eric Clapton, Robert Johnson, Keith Richards, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.
All of these guitarists were directly or indirectly influenced by Lonnie Johnson, as were many others.
BB King: “Me, hearing what I heard Lonnie play, I know even today, a lot of it, I can’t play. And I don’t hear anybody else playin’ some of the things he played. The man was way ahead of his time” (from The B.B. King Treasures, by King and Dick Waterman)
T-Bone Walker stated that Lonnie and Scrapper Blackwell were far and away his favorite guitarists. (from The Guitar Players by James Sallis © 1982)
Ry Cooder: “Lonnie Johnson was one of the transcendent people who influenced everybody.” "You can see people copying him right and left," slide guitarist Ry Cooder told Jas Obrecht of Guitar Player. "I was crazy about Lonnie Johnson. Lonnie was so versatile."
Chuck Berry: …in his autobiography (Chuck Berry : The Autobiography ), Berry cites Lonnie Johnson’s influence.
Mark Knopfler notes Lonnie is one of the three he listens to for pleasure: Three Guitarists Mark Knopfler
Robert Johnson (no relation) was without a doubt influenced by Lonnie. In his book “The Original Guitar Hero and the The Power of Music”, the author (Dean Alger) interviewed two people who played with Robert. One said, “I knew Robert was playing a lot of Lonnie’s stuff.” Another, “Robert often talked about Lonnie Johnson. He admired his music so much that he would tell people that…he was related to Lonnie Johnson.”
There are also instances of Robert lifting lyrics directly from Lonnie. The Lonnie song “Blue Ghost Blues”, has the line: “My doorknob keeps on turning round and round”. The exact same line is in Robert’s “Malted Milk.”
Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones said, “You can trace Lonnie’s playing style in a direct line through T-Bone Walker and BB King to Eric Clapton.” (from Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey)
Jimmy Page on the huge influence of BB King: “he has proved of fundamental importance to the development of modern popular music. He has influenced nearly every … successful blues player and rock artist too, from Chuck Berry, Buddy Guy, and Jimi Hendrix to Prince and Eric Clapton … Myself, Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons, and Keith Richards have all had BB King as vital common denominator and source of inspiration.” (from The B.B. King Treasures, by King and Dick Waterman)
Now let’s listen to the music.
Playing with the Strings (1928)
This song stylistically is a combination of blues and jazz. The time signature is straight blues, but the improvisational melodies and harmonies are jazz.
You can tell Lonnie is having fun on this recording. “Sing for me, guitar” “Take it Mr. Piano man”. “I want all you people to listen while my guitar sings” “If you ain’t got that rhythm, it don’t mean a thing.”
A really fun up-tempo song with some really stunning guitar.
A really nice, unusual melody, repeated several times, with slight variations.
This is a straight up ballad, and a really great song. It was covered by Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. Dylan closed some of his concerts in the 1970s with this song. The lyrics are universal.
This performance is later in Lonnie’s career. It is mostly jazz, but it has that blues feel too. I include this one because it is one of the few videos of Lonnie Johnson.
Have To Change Keys To Play These Blues
This one is a duet with Eddie Lang, who was white, but Eddie used the name “Blind Willie Dunn” on this and all his recordings with Lonnie. Lang was a highly regarded jazz guitarist, but Lonnie plays the lead most of the time on this recording. According to the music history scholars I read, most of this performance was improvised in the studio. The historians say the song does change keys between D, and G, twice.
Another duet with Lang. A very fast tune, but the two guitarists are always complementary.
More Lang/Johnson at a slower pace.
Langston Hughes (African-American poet) said Lonnie Johnson was “ perhaps the finest living male singer of the blues.” (Songs Called the Blues) He put some of the lyrics of “Jelly Roll Baker” in his Book of Negro Humor.
Lonnie recorded 3 versions of this song over the years. It has more of an R&B feel to it than blues or jazz. Note the “stop time” breaks.
This recording is near the end of Lonnie’s life. Elmer Snowden found him working as a janitor in Philadelphia, and convinced him to record the album this song comes from. A jazzy ballad. It reminds you the man could sing as well as play guitar.
This one of the earliest Lonnie recordings. Note the “double stops” which is more characteristic of violin playing (which Lonnie also played when he was younger.)
In compiling this I noticed how playful Lonnie could be.
Song titles like “Playing with the Blues”, “Woke up with the Blues in My Fingers”, “She’s Making Whoopee in Hell Tonight”, “You Can’t Give a Woman Everything She Needs”, “Playing with the Strings”, “Have To Change Keys To Play These Blues”, “From Now on Make Your Whoopee at Home”, “Hot Fingers”, etc are fun song titles. You can tell he was having fun on so many of his recordings.
Lonnie Johnson died in 1970 after being hit by a car in Toronto.
He was buried in Philadelphia in a pauper’s grave. The Killer Blues Headstone Project purchased a headstone for Lonnie around 2014.
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