Lonnie Johnson: Outta NOLA

There are innumerable expectations that come with being a musician hailing from New Orleans. Of course, folks expect you to not only possess a skill superior to other players, but include a vast array of musics. And while performers function at  different levels of inclusion, working with folk, blues, country, jazz, calypso, zydeco and whatever else is floating around down there, none have so unwittingly influenced the American a landscape of music in the same fashion that Lonnie Johnson did. No, you might not be overly familiar with that gentleman’s name, but if you’re not, he probably influenced at least a few folks you do know about.

By the time Johnson reached his early teen aged years, he’d settled on the violin as his first instrument and began accompanying not just his father’s band – alongside his brother James – but also a few other jazz groups in the area. It wasn’t quite the ‘20s. But as the country moved towards the depression, Johnson solidified his guitar skills and began playing folk, blues and jazz on a six and twelve string guitar. Unfortunately, much like other players of the era, Johnson’s career was put on hold during the depression due to the scarcity of materials needed to press records. He was, however, able to record with Eddie Lang, who for the sessions, went by the name Blind Willie Dunn. The fact that these players constituted the height of talent prior to Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt makes the resulting sides some of the most important in the history of the guitar.

This wasn’t the only style that Johnson would record in, though. And he actually first gained notoriety through winning a blues contest, latter commenting on the fact that he performed the way he did just in order to win. As a result, though, he was pigeon holed for a time. But as a result, his playing is credited with including some of the first single note solos on the guitar – you gotta remember, guitars weren’t always amplified and this was still a relatively primitive time for recording. Regardless of these easily heard talents, Johnson, though, eventually sunk into obscurity and ceased recording for a time only to be ‘rediscovered’ a bit later and packaged as a folk singer.

Johnson might not have enjoyed being stuck with the tag, but it served his purposes, again allowing him to set some songs down in a studio. Because of all the genre pegging, it makes picking a disc by this guitarist that seems reputable and representative a bit difficult. Copping Tomorrow Night – the Gusto Records version, I believe that there’s more than on disc with that title – finds the player moving adroitly between each of the styles he that he works with so well. Johnson can be heard sounding a bit like Leadbelly before getting into some early Chicago style blues and using an electric guitar. There’s really no way by which to say that this is the definitive or necessary set, but it amply displays Johnson’s ability to play what he wants when he wants to.