Born Alonzo Johnson in New Orleans, LA, in 1894, Lonnie Johnson is
widely considered to be the first great modern blues guitarist.
Legendary guitarists from
Robert Johnson to
T-Bone Walker to
B.B. King have acknowledged his influence on
their music. From the 1920s, when he started his career, to the 1960s,
when he ended it, he recorded hundreds of songs both on his own and as
a sideman or accompanist. He is considered, if not the first, then one
of the first guitarists to blend blues and jazz, with a clean, smooth
and polished style.
Ironically, though he became famous for his guitar playing, the first
musical instrument he learned to play was the violin, which he played
in his father's string band. He later learned to play the banjo,
mandolin and piano. In 1917, at age 23, he joined a musical revue that
traveled to London, England, to perform. When he returned to the US in
1919, he discovered to his horror that the worldwide influenza pandemic
of that year had virtually wiped out his family--his mother, father and
11 of his 12 siblings had died from it. Grief-stricken, he left New
Orleans and moved to St. Louis, MO, with his surviving brother James,
and got work on the steamboats and riverboats plying the Mississippi
River, playing in the bands of such legends as Charlie Creath and Fate
Marable. In 1925 he entered and won a weekly blues contest held in a
St. Louis theater, and he was signed to a recording contract by Okeh
Records. He made recordings both on his own and with other artists,
such as Louis Armstrong ("Savoy
Blues") and Duke Ellington ("The
Mooche").
His recording career took a downturn during the Great Depression of the
late 1920s, and for quite a few years after that he had to work outside
of the music industry in order to make enough money to support himself.
In the mid-1940s he began recording again, for Aladdin Records and then
for King Records (on one of his King releases, 1948's "I Know It's
Love", he played an electric guitar, the first time he had ever done
so). His comeback didn't last very long, however. Abandoning his blues
and jazz roots, he tailored his music for mainstream R&B audiences, and
when that genre began to fade out in the mid-1950s to be supplanted by
rock-'n'-roll, his career took a nosedive. Once again, though, it was
revived by changing musical tastes, this time the blues resurgence pf
the 1960s, and he toured successfully as a folk/blues guitarist.
Unfortunately, while in Toronto, Canada, in 1969 he was struck by a car
and died of complications from the accident a year later.
