Customer Reviews

North/South

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Jimmy Johnson emerged in the late seventies when blues were in their pre-Stevie Ray Vaughan doldrums. He was the major find in Bruce Iglauer's Living Chicago Blues series for Alligator, then signed with Delmark. This is the second album and it's very fine from start to finish. Johnson is not a typical blues singer; his voice is high gospel tenor. He's not a typical blues guitar player; there's very little flash and none of the long sustained notes that are many players' stock in trade (he doesn't sound like anyone else I've heard). But he writes and selects strong blues lyrics and fits them with clever arrangements which borrow from soul and even jazz. "Can't go no further" is one of the smoothest smoldering slow blues you'll ever hear.

This is not your typical blues album. It's funky, souly, and most importantly, it's bluesy. Jimmy's sound is much more refined, in the sense that there's texture and layers in the music, if you know what I mean (I hope). The guys playing have the talent to take the music into uncharted territory, and at first you may not think you're listening to the blues. But once you hear Jimmy, and the things he's singing, you'll know it's the blues.

I got hooked on electric guitar in the early seventies when I heard Robin Trower's distorted guitar ripping out of Procol Harum's Whiskey Train and howling out the melody in Simple Sister. Decades of exploring took me back to the early geniuses like Son House, Skip James, Charlie Patton, Willie Brown, Robert Johnson, and many other brilliant guys whose recorded works are the foundation of all the blues-based music that came after. That took me to the early electrified music of Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Freddie King, B.B. King, Otis Rush, Albert King, Albert Collins, and others. It took longer to find out about Jimmy Johnson. His vocal range and guitar style don't seem to have appealed to people who had a fixed notion of what "the blues" is or should be. And Jimmy seems to have had his fair share of trouble getting his sound properly recorded. A lot of his later records don't compare to his early ones. His early recordings, like this one, and especially his crowning achievement, 1983's "Barroom Preacher," are by far his best. If you haven't heard Jimmy play and sing before I can almost guarantee that you'll be put off at first. It's like your first sip of scotch, if you remember that. But on this and "Barroom Preacher," he sings good songs from the heart and plays some guitar that, if you listen carefully, you'll find to be elegant, articulate, expressive, and satisfying. Unlike a lot of so-called blues guitar players who play the same "blues scale" licks in every song over every chord regardless of the harmony, Jimmy plays with the chord changes. He is a real musician, if that matters to you, not just a "guitar player" or "blues player." Although this album is a good one, I still have to recommend "Barroom Preacher" over this. On "Barroom Preacher," everything clicked, from the performances of all the players to the quality of the sound recording to the swing. Jimmy Johnson's "Barroom Preacher" is a classic blues record that deserves to be recognized as a peer to the best of them. If you just want to get an idea of Jimmy Johnson, go the the "Barroom Preacher" page and download "I Have the Same Old Blues." That one song at 2:51 will tell you all you need to know about Jimmy Johnson. I'll bet that, like the scotch, you'll find yourself going back to it again and again.