Four score is a good run for a blues piano player, a session man, a back-up guy who played thousands of dates and hundreds of sessions, content to sit and play while others strutted and duck-walked across the stage. The great Johnnie Johnson passed from this life on Wednesday and I can't let the sober week settle into the weekend drinking without a brief mention of this wonderful, lyrical man. As Rolling Stone noted, Johnson died at his home in St. Louis, at the age of 80, after bouts with pneumonia and a kidney ailment. With his death, rock & roll lost a vital link to its roots in the Chicago boogie-woogie of Meade Lux Lewis and the jumping-piano jazz of Earl Hines and Count Basie. But let's face it: Johnson's name will always be linked with another St. Louis lad, the great Chuck Berry. While Berry invented rock and roll guitar, Johnson laid down the chords, the deep resonance that matched bass and drums to form the erotically-charged melange of rock. He was Johnny B. Goode. Johnson discovered Berry, not vice versa, and gave the guitarist his big break. But Johnson became the sideman - perhaps the great rock n' roll sideman - and played on all the great Berry sides during the decade-long run from mid-50s to 60s, from Maybelline to Nadine. Here's what Keith Richards, who reunited Berry and Johnson for a mid-80s film, had to say about the great piano man - a cool and fitting eulogy:
Johnnie had amazing simpatico. He had a way of slipping into a song, an innate feel for complementing the guitar. It's the kind of thing I hear when I listen to Muddy Waters with Otis Spann or Pinetop Perkins. Back then, I was also listening to Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr, Big Maceo with Tampa Red. I always thought piano and guitar were a very interesting combination. Johnnie was a jazzman, too. In fact, most of the best blues piano players were basically jazzmen. You should have heard Johnnie talk about Art Tatum.
It was that left hand. That left hand was a power station. And the right hand - listen to "Wee Wee Hours." Wow! You knew you were in the wee, wee hours.
It was very fortuitous that I got to do the Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll movie with him. I knew Johnnie and Chuck hadn't been together for years and years, and I didn't honestly know if Johnnie was still playing. The most surprising thing was Chuck said, "Yeah, he's in town . . . I'll give him a call." That, for me, was the crown on the taping. And it was such a beautiful thing, the way he slipped in and, through that movie, had a whole new career.
He was a real gent, absolutely. He was such a sweet, warm guy - almost like a big baby at times. But inside, there was a very strong guy, and it came out in the music. I was fascinated by those huge hands, doing such incredibly precise, delicate work. I always compared them to a bunch of overripe bananas. But he could do amazing things with those bananas.
