One of the last of the rural deep south juke-joint bluesmen
During the 1970s and early 80s, anyone in search of authentic juke-joint blues ? the old, and disappearing, black music of the rural and small-town American south ? was advised to go to Mississippi and look for a trio called either the Nighthawks or the Jelly Roll Kings. Big Jack Johnson, who has died aged 70 after a lengthy period of ill health, was this group's lead guitarist and second vocalist, and its last survivor, the leader Frank Frost having died in 1999 and Sam Carr in 2009.
Since the mid-80s, however, he had had a career of his own as an energetic, old-fashioned blues singer, sharing the values as well as the background of contemporaries such as Magic Slim. Nonetheless, like most blues musicians, he was unable to make a living from music alone, and relied on the steady income of a day job, delivering heating oil to customers in and around Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Johnson was born in Lambert, a few miles east of Clarksdale. His musical training began with his father, Ellis, who played several instruments and led a band at local functions. By the age of 13, Jack had joined him, playing the guitar, but within a few years he was directed to a more urban sound by hearing the records of BB King.
In 1962 he sat in at a Clarksdale gig by Frost and Carr ? the former singing and playing harmonica, the latter at the drums ? and the group immediately became a trio, "working", as Johnson's friend and sometime record producer Michael Frank says, "every imaginable little bar and roadhouse in that part of Mississippi". In the same year, as Frank Frost and the Nighthawks, they recorded an album, Hey Boss Man!, at Sam Phillips's Sun Studio in Memphis.
Though the trio's performances were sporadic, they acquired a reputation far beyond Mississippi, and blues fans and documentary film-makers alike sought them out. In 1975 Frank heard them at Clarksdale's Black Fox club. "They absolutely rocked the place," he remembered, "mixing up a funky sound of blues, rock and soul, and country and western to a packed house of about 100 black patrons." Gripped by the experience, he returned three years later to find the club closed and the band scattered, but he got them back together and booked them into Ardent studios in Memphis to make an album for his new label, Earwig Records.
Rockin' The Juke Joint Down gave Johnson his first opportunity to display his rich voice on record, and led to some work for the trio in Europe, but the demands of their day jobs made such touring difficult, and soon they separated again. In 1986 Frank booked Johnson and Frost for the Chicago Blues Festival and recorded Johnson's first album in his own name, The Oil Man. It was followed in 1989 by the more elaborately produced and very fine Daddy, When Is Mama Comin Home?, including the song Mr U.S. A.I.D.S., one of the first responses to HIV/Aids from the blues community.
Among further albums were a vivid Live in Chicago, for Earwig, and four for MC Records. In these Johnson revealed other facets, such as a taste for country music, which he had enjoyed since he was a boy. He also joined the small body of blues musicians who play the mandolin. The Memphis Barbecue Sessions (2002), a warm collaboration with the harmonica player Kim Wilson and the pianist Pinetop Perkins, won a WC Handy award in 2003 for best acoustic blues album. He released his last two albums, Juke Joint Saturday Night (2007) and Katrina (2008), himself.
Johnson was regarded with great affection and admiration on the Mississippi delta blues circuit. "There were many nights that I walked away from Big Jack's shows at Red's Lounge," recalled Roger Stolle of Clarksdale's Cat Head record shop, "telling whoever I was with that Big Jack is a monster on guitar." He won numerous awards in Living Blues and other magazine polls, appeared in the documentary Deep Blues (1992) and participated in the making of Craig Brewer's feature film Black Snake Moan (2006).
He is survived by Angenette, his wife of 49 years, three sisters, four brothers, eight daughters and four sons.
? Big Jack Johnson, blues musician, born 30 July 1940; died 14 March 2011
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/01/big-jack-johnson-obituary
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