Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
Shines nonetheless followed his hero around, watching him play whenever he could and trying to learn his licks. Lore has it that Shines first performed onstage during one of Wolf’s juke-joint gigs: while the big man was taking a break, Shines hijacked his guitar and got the place jumping. Shines started playing around northeast Arkansas, hitchhiking back to Memphis for Saturday-afternoon gigs in a park off Beale Street, and became known as “Little Wolf.”
In 1946, Shines recorded for the first time, but the two sides he cut with Columbia Records wouldn’t be released until 1971. Similarly, his 1950 session with Chess produced two sides that didn’t come out till 1970, on a compilation LP where he’s billed as “Shoe Shine Johnny” (a name he resented).
The Johnny Shines Blues Band contributed four tracks to the 1966 Vanguard compilation Chicago/The Blues/Today! Vol. 3. That same year, Shines appeared on an Otis Spann LP and released his first full album under his own name, the Testament Records release Masters of Modern Blues Vol. 1 (with Spann on piano, Big Walter on harmonica, Lee Jackson on bass, and Fred Below of the Aces on drums).
The 1953 cut “Brutal Hearted Woman,” which features Big Walter Horton on harmonica, appears on one of Johnny Shines’s first singles.
Johnny Shines’s first LP under his own name includes “So Cold in Vietnam,” with Fred Below on drums and lots of Shines’s slide guitar.
A Johnny Shines original from his final album, 1991’s Back to the Country with Snooky Pryor
