Interview by S. Nelson of Larry Johnson
S. Nelson: Thank you Mr.Johnson, for taking the time to give this interview. Before we start, is there any area or subject matter that is taboo for me to inquire about, to discussion or to use as a writing point?
Larry Johnson: None, let's do it, let's lay it down.
Question: Can you comment on your recent Compact Disk re-issue of your 1971 record "Fast and Funky" and compare it to your style of the 90"s?
Larry Johnson: "I'm more accurate now, in 71' it was skill. Now it's skill, time and experience. I hit the target now, I'm more familiar with my instrument now than I was then. My ideas now are more worked out and I know more now than I knew then. I'm more of a finished product, whether its with the guitar or the voice, it doesn't take me as long to get to the point of sayin it's finished'.
With a stringed instrument be it a piano, violin, guitar, the range is endless and it's up to the musician to take it where he wants or as far as he can go."
Question: Where on that range from point A to Endless, do you think you as a musician both stringed and vocal, have gone?
Larry Johnson: I've gone from A to Z cause I've "discovered" the many combinations where the moods of the mind are endless. When it comes to telling stories, I got 58 years of experience, not counting the first two or so where you just see and hear but don't understand. From 3-4 years old, you kind of remember and understood what you see and hear, and by 12 years old you begin to understand the mechanisms of what's going on around you, including music, and if it appeals to you in any type of way, it registers in your mind, heart and soul, and stays with you, even if you don't do anything with it till years later. If you meet an older person that takes an interest in you, and fate's (faith's?) placement allows you to recognize yourself as that same kind of person, that's what happened with Davis (Reverend Gary Davis, grand master of ragtime guitar) and me. And with nothing being written, through him I began to learn what was inside me all the time. Though I didn't know it was inside me, he knew it.
Question: Can you relate to us how you came to realize you were no longer a kid into music, but rather a man?
Larry Johnson: I had "good-timed" my life away, at 20 years old in Harlem, roamin around funnin with my music, when I realized I couldn't read. This was in the late 50's, and I needed to go to work to live. Harlem streets were numbered , and I had to "go below the numbers" like down to Lexington Avenue, you know, the named streets, looking for work. And I realized I wasn't prepared, having to fill out applications and such, this all hit me when I was around 20-22 years old.
Reverend Davis I saw as a minister more than a musician, although I listened to his music, and I'd go to him for kinda spiritual guidance, and explained stuff to him, and he saw me as being blind... he'd talk about "life-shapers" like he remembered what the old timers referred to as "when the sun went out", what we now know as an eclipse, and the effect that had on uneducated people, he was around when the car and the airplane and the phone came on the scene, and he related to me as being two persons who had come through some of the same experiences. I've already experienced a few "Time Changes" myself, like the computer. You know Tony Brown, a journalist was giving some advice to a young lady about relationships today, and he said "if you meet a young black man that interests you, ask him one question, ask him if he owns a computer, and if he says no, keep walkin"... That's how Davis helped me.
Question: Your workshop performance in the tent at the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival in Davenport, Iowa, was fantastic. At times your guitar playing had certain Lightnin' Hopkins qualities to it, How do you see Lightnin Hopkins in your music?
Larry Johnson: I remember Lightnin' from when I was a 10 year old boy and this "blues" thing was settlin in my soul, and I liked it. He always played in the key of E, which all black folks play in, his voice was strong, his play was strong, and when I grew up, boys took after men, strong men, like in the movies, like Randolf Scott in the westerns...I always liked his class and the way he handled himself, Like Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole in music you know, strong men. I came along at a time there wasn't a thing called a homo, there were sissies... a man was a man and that's all there was. You represented who you were, your manhood. Lightnin' was strong.
Question: You refer to your guitar as your "Company Keeper". What did it "take out of you", what did it "rob" you of, what did you have to "give up" to become so good with your Company Keeper?
Larry Johnson: Now that's a new question, let me think about that before I answer..."It robbed me of depending on others, of giving in, it put me on a plateau of "my way or no way". It led to the end of my marriage to a young southern woman who couldn't see the blues "payin off" and taking care of the children and her.. it was like " I got something that can take the place of you". It was the excitement of the discovery of something I could do and knowin "how" to do. I had very little education. I was a drop out.
It robbed me of love, I didn't need a girlfriend other than for sexual purposes, it robbed me of socializing, performing to me came to be my way of "going out" and performing sometimes still does that to me. Between 1961 and 1972 when Davis passed, all my friends like Brownie McGee, Sonny Terry, Stix McGee and all of em, they was either leaving New York or dying My patience started to getting short with others. At times I hated being around people, but I felt I had to play the hand that fate dealt me, and I'd go on performing... Fats Waller once told me a story about a lady who came up to him after one of his performances and told him how "she'd be willing to die if she could play like that", to which Fats Waller responded "I did!"
It robbed me of both giving and receiving love and affection up until only recent years. Now, even sittin down and practicing rejuvenates me. After losses of my children and grandchildren, and at my age the loss of my father in a tragic way, I don't think I could make it without my instrument. Since a young age it became my Company Keeper. The instrument by way of letting me discover new sounds and ways of doing things became an adventure and I'm still on it.
Question: In your live performances, you dispense more than a little bit of wisdom, good sense and know-how. How did you develop your"philosopher" side with the ability to literally "teach" about perceptions (or lack thereof) held by black people and white people?
Larry Johnson: Experience did it, I'm talking about things that happened in my life, we're all products of our surroundings. Mickey Rooney once said "age is like experience, some of us have more than others!"
Question: Can you tell us more about your feelings that black people don't support the blues because they are outnumbered and generally don't cross-mingle?
Larry Johnson: Like the holocaust and the Jews, they don't support it do they? An effect of slavery created in our foreparents a tendency to say "let's just drop the whole thing!" When I left the south and came north, I had no idea that I was bringin a tradition with me. By me being a dropout, it put me around people like me, in Harlem, not Park Avenue. Gary Davis saw THAT in me, and probably was surprised to meet a youngster like me. They recognised it long before I did, Davis, Brownie, Sonnie, Stix, because I was one of them, one of their KIND, regardless of my age, KIND has nothing to do with color, you feel it, you are comfortable, and it brings out the best in you. Other Kind puts you on guard.
Question: You started out as a Harmonica Man, do you have any plans to bring it back into your performances, even for fun?
Larry Johnson: It depends on the event in my life. It isn't required now... I don't see why I should. "Not even for Fun" don't pay no bills, don't put no biscuit on the table. A musician saying I had fun says to me a bank account, a rent receipt on the dresser, AND two or three biscuits on the table. The one that says I'm damn glad that one's over, now, he can play!
Question: A lot of Blues songs are built around the double entendre, the sexual inference, conquests and heartbreak. How many ways can a musician hide the blatantly obvious attraction between the sexes?
Larry Johnson: I don't sing vulgar, sexual or suggestive songs. I don't care for that. I don't do Robert Johnson songs where women are beaten up. It's probably my spiritual upbringing that keeps me away from that.
That type of artist turned people away from the blues long ago. Back after slavery, a black entertainer couldn't do much except degrade through the medium, cause the money to be made off of music was controlled by the white man, and the message had to be a message that was sellable to a white market. As black people more and more became educated, they turned away from Blues.
Question: As a little boy, did you chop Johnson Grass, pull peanuts, fight the Boll Weevil or do any of those other rural farm-like things when you were down there in Georgia?
Larry Johnson: I would be taken to the cotton fields where I'd play while the work was going on. I was too small. My father was educated and planned to take us away from that, and did. He was strict and hard on us, and I rebelled against school. I see it now, and to this day I can hear my father say "you won't even study". It all came clear to me after about age 33 what he was trying to do.
My father had two degrees, one from Savannah State and one from Morehouse. I can still remember they were from the 30's, because he kept them hangin all the time on my bedroom wall. I still see them, and the memory still educates me.
Question: Will you describe for us, your music, its sound, and its structure?
Larry Johnson: Just call it the Larry Johnson sound, and leave it up the listener to get personal with it. Reverend Davis' sound was a personal thing he discovered as a product of the black experience of his day, as I do in my day to remind the whole world of the Black Experience through the Blues.
You know, the "Blues" was probably a name put on black peoples slave-day music to sell it. Africans from all tribes were brought to this land to work, and then after they worked, they had to be put down, and they had to evolve a way of communication with each other, and it all probably started with some kind of music, cause America got the African, but America didn't bring the drum. That's what Chaz's Washboard reminds me of. That's what the hambone reminds me of. Music drew people together to make a system to communicate.
One last question Mr. Johnson, for our Kansas City blues fans and readers of the Kansas City Blues News, a monthly newsletter of the Kansas City Blues Society:
Question: Would close our interview by telling us about the song you sing with Angels in it, and exactly what does it mean to you?
Larry Johnson: "Can you Hear the Angels Sing" is one of my originals. It'll be on my next CD. I tried to put our heritage and the Black Experience into that song. To me, I represent the Black Experience in America cause I'm a Black Man doing a Black Thing!
Thank you and Right On Mr. Larry Johnson, See you in September!
Webmaster: Gil T. Wilson
Last Modified 16 August '98