Johnnie passed away today (4-13-05) in his sleep at 7:30am

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Johnnie Johnson died Wednesday morning. Johnson is best known for his longtime collaboration with Chuck Berry. He was 80 years old.

In the 1950s, Johnson was a local bandleader who hired Chuck Berry to fill in when another band member was ill on New Year's Eve. That was the beginning of a decades-long partnership that landed both men in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Legend has it that Berry's rock and roll classic Johnny B. Goode was named after Johnnie Johnson.

During his career, the self-taught piano player performed with a who's who of rock and blues musicians, including Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, John Lee Hooker and Bo Diddley.


Vilhelm
Nordic Stones Vikings



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-04-13 20:36 by mickijaggeroo.

Very sad.
RIP Johnnie.

very sad, indeed. johnnie was the original johnny b. goode, having authored the famous riffs that CB copped. he was a true original. i'm sure KR is quite saddened by the passing of his good friend.

Ironically, I was just watching Hail Hail Rock'n'Roll last night and watching how Johnnie played with such ease. I love the things Keith mentions about him in regards to how alot of the Chuck Berry riffs were originally Johnnie's piano riffs which Chuck adapted to guitar.

RIP Johnnie.

Get the JJ CD Johnnie B.Bad from 1991 with the Wino`s participation and Keith on vocals on Key to the Highway. Great stuff, great sound! (+ B.Fowler, E.Clapton, Bernie Worrell)

RIP Johnnie



[doctorstonesblog.blogspot.com]

Extremely sad! A big loss to everyone who worked with him, knew him, and loved him. I knew Johnnie and had the pleasure of working with him a few times in Colorado. Johnnie was going to play my wedding in June(before I canceled it because I broke it off with my fiance) What a huge loss! A member of RatDog, and a family member to The Stones. Johnnie told me Keith & Mick used to fight over hsi daughter.........she was a hotie!

Thanks for all the great piano and may Angels watch over you Johnnie.

ROCKMAN

In Jan 2003 in Houston, JJ came onstage and played with the band on Honky Tonk Women. I'm sure a good number of the crowd did not know who he was, but it was interesting to see the members of the Stones go ga-ga over him the way the fans were ga-ga over the Stones. Maybe that's why that show was so hot.

Movin' out......... (on Johnnie B. Bad; Elektra 7559-61149-2)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-04-13 22:12 by Potted Shrimp.

We all have to fade away some day ... lucky one who gets 80 years!

...without Johnnie Johnson there would have been no Chuck Berry and without Chuck Berry we would all be living in some different universe. ---R

I just talked to him Saturday where he played a few tunes on the piano at the wedding reception of a mutual friend in St. Louis. While he did mention he'd spent some time in the hospital you couldn't tell it, and he was still in fine form on the keys!

Here's an article from our local news on him today:
[www.stltoday.com]

I still remember seeing him with the Stones at our baseball stadium (Busch) on the Steel Wheels tour playing Little Red Rooster, and at both shows filmed for the Hail Hail Rock and Roll documentary where I first heard of him! He was one of a kind...

He seemed to get a kick out of me mentioning I saw his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech 3 times it was so cool (and Keith's was almost as cool)!

Sadly Keith has lost three friends this year

Hunter S Thompson, Justin Hinds & now Johnnie Johnson.

ROCKMAN

He contributed more to music than he ever got credited for. What a talented man. Chuck Berry owes him a lot.

Milo, NYC
Now I got those @#$%&' blues

Great man!

I had a "drink of Tanqueray" whilst Keith and Johnnie played for me last night. RIP, Johnnie.

Wonder if Berry will even acknowledge him?

Chuck Berry did a TV interview here in St. Louis and had some very kind words, said he's the best piano player he ever worked with and will ever work with. An AP report mentioned Berry is planning a tribute show for him.

That's good to hear, as Johnny was so vital to Chuck (Berry).

It's a sad day," says Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, mourning his idol and good friend Johnnie Johnson. "I've been playing Chuck Berry records all day, listening to Johnnie."
Johnson died on Wednesday at his home in St. Louis, at the age of eighty, after recent 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. Born on July 8th, 1924, in Fairmont, Virginia, Johnson was the son of a coal miner and entirely self-taught on the piano. By the early Fifties, he was in St. Louis, leading his own combo. But on New Year's Eve 1952, Johnson hired a struggling, local guitarist, Chuck Berry, to sit in for another member of the band. Johnson quickly ceded the limelight to Berry's guitar and songs, and both of their lives were changed forever.

Johnson went on to become the greatest sideman in rock & roll, at the very moment the music was being born. He played on most of Berry's biggest and best records of the Fifties and early Sixties, including "Maybellene," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Memphis, Tennessee," "Little Queenie" and "Nadine (Is It You?)." Johnson played with Berry, on and off, into the Seventies, until personal tensions, compounded by Johnson's drinking, caused Johnson to retire back to St. Louis. He was driving a van for the elderly when Keith Richards brought him out of retirement to play at the 1986 shows filmed for the Chuck Berry concert movie, Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll.

Richards and Johnson quickly became collaborators and more, a relationship that lasted until Johnson's death. The day after Johnson's passing, Richards took a break from spinning those Berry records to talk about Johnson and his rock & roll legacy.

Do you recall the first time you heard Johnnie Johnson -- when you realized who he was and what he was playing on those Chuck Berry records?

That's a good question. I talked to Johnnie about that. It took me a couple of years to track down the band members' names, to know the name "Johnnie Johnson." At first, it was just, "What a great band!" They didn't give credit then. And especially knowing Chuck, you'd never get a credit [laughs].

As a guitarist, what attracted you to Johnnie as a piano player?

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.

But Johnnie came out of jazz, to rock & roll, with a natural energy. He never sounded too smart or clever for the music.

"Natural" is the word. There was also a great sense of humor in his playing. It really fit, because that was what rock & roll was all about. It's a humorous music -- "Too Much Monkey Business." There were a lot of jokes going on.

I was listening to "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" and marveling at the power in Johnnie's playing, which was not always immediately evident on the records because of the way he was mixed back, behind Berry's guitar.

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 looked like such a gentle, unassuming man. It was hard to imagine the brilliance coming out of those hands.

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.

You produced two tracks on his 1991 album, Johnnie B. Bad, which was the first album he'd ever made under his own name.

One of the tracks I did was "Tanqueray." That was one of his favorite tipples, before he had to give it up. He was an amazing guy to play with: You could close your eyes, listen to him, and you were back in Chicago, at the Chess studios.

One of his last live performances was with the Stones, in Houston in 2003, on the Forty Licks tour. He came out and played "Honky Tonk Women" with you. Was he still in good form?

He seemed in pretty good shape. He'd slowed down a bit, but not playing-wise. To me, he seemed his beaming, old, jolly self.

Did Johnnie ever talk to you about his feelings over the songwriting credits for those Berry hits? [In 2000, Johnson sued Berry for credits and royalties on more than fifty Berry songs, but a federal judge dismissed the case, saying too much time had passed since the songs were written and recorded.]

In a way, I'm a bit responsible. I said to Johnnie, "These songs should really say Berry/Johnson." It was obvious after talking to him and watching him play. But Chuck being Chuck, you'd be lucky to get a quarter. Or you'd end up paying him.

But in the end, with the way Johnnie's career took off again after the Chuck Berry movie, he got his due.

To me, that was the joy of working with him -- to see him get his own record contract, tour the world and work with loads of other people, who got to dig him. Because otherwise, he would have just been Chuck Berry's sideman.

Actually, it was Johnnie's band to start with. Chuck superimposed himself on top. And Johnnie, being such an easy-going guy, was like, "Yeah, he's the frontman now." He'd take it like that.

In a way, Johnnie reminded me a lot of [Stones pianist] Ian Stewart. It was Ian who pointed Johnnie out to me, because he was a Johnnie Johnson freak. So it all comes around.



DAVID FRICKE

well this really saddens me....johnny johnson has passed on....right now i'm sitting in the lobby of a day's inn located right outside the entrance to capitol reef nat'l park...went to check my mail and saw this posted on yahoo...strange cuz yesterday driving through the utah badlands from green river to torrey i was blasting a chuck berry comp i made....usually i sit and play air guitar while robyn is driviing but yesterday i was playing air piano on the dash...i met johnny during the furthur fest when he was playing with bobby weir and ratdog...he was the nicest humblest person you could meet...i had just finished saying hi to some friends who were on the bill when i spotted johnny sitting in a lawn chair outside his tour bus...i went over and introduced myself and he got up and shook my mind and posed for some pictures with me...sweet...i was thinking "i just shook the hand that tinkled those ivories on all of THOSE songs"...later a very funny scene occured...all the folks involved in the closing day's jam were figuring out the set and who would play what...anyway somebody say's let's do johnny b goode...johnson's face lights up and he quietly offers "ya know, i played on that record"...everyone in the room turned and looked at him with a "yeah we know" look...i'm talking tons of cats now...hot tuna, memebers of the dead, los lobos, etc...johnny was genuinely surprised that they knew this, that's how unassuminmg the man was...sail on bro and thanks for making the world a better place and my life the more joyous for your playing and that's what music means...now excuse me while i go kill my ankle some more on a hike to hickman bridge in capitol reef...