Jimmy Johnson‘s keening tenor voice and supple, emotionally intense guitar lines are considered something of a miracle among blues lovers these days, emanating as they do from a man born more than 90 years ago in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Johnson’s 60-plus-year career has taken him from hardscrabble urban jukes to nightclubs, concert halls, and festivals around the world, and his influences include gospel, doo-wop, and deep soul as well as country music, jazz, and of course the venerable Delta-Memphis-Chicago blues lineage.
Jimmy Johnson Blues Band Fri 6/7, 6:30 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Jimmy Johnson & Leo Charles Sun 6/9, 4:20 PM, Lagunitas Brewery Tap Room, 2607 W. 17th, 773-522-1308, free, 21+
Blues Fest after-party with Jimmy Johnson, Billy Flynn, Bob Stroger, Melvin Smith, Dave Katzman, David Sims Sun 6/9, 9 PM, Reggies’ Music Joint, 2105 S. State, free, 21+
By the early 1960s, Johnson was leading his own band. It wasn’t a blues band, per se: club audiences demanded entertainers with diverse, crowd-pleasing repertoires, and with his longtime admiration for jazz and pop, Johnson found it easy to accommodate them. He was also among the first African American bandleaders in Chicago to play white clubs, expanding even further to include pop fare such as “Hang On Sloopy” (his band, the Sparks, featured his old friend Matt Murphy on guitar and Singing Sam Chatmon on vocals). When he got the opportunity to record under his own name in 1968, he worked up a driving, funk-blues instrumental that the Stuff label released as “Get It” b/w “Work Your Thing,” credited to Jimmie Johnson & the Lucky Hearts. Neither that record nor its follow-ups had much success, though, and for the next few years Johnson focused increasingly on sideman work, backing the likes of Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Tyrone Davis, Ruby Andrews, and Otis Clay.
