 JJ is Dissed and Pissed
by Jeff Harrell
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, Jimmy Johnson had to go to the bathroom.It was a long flight back to Chicago from France, where the 84-year-old guitarist played earlier this month for two sold-out crowds that jammed the Cognac Blues Festival to share space with one of the last of America's living genuine blues articles. Johnson got up from his third-row seat in the coach section and waited to use the bathroom a few feet away. But the blues musician's legendary status - at least in France - was lost on one of the flight's attendants. That bathroom was for passengers sitting in first class, the steward informed him. He directed Johnson to a facility in the rear of the plane. Being told to go to the back of the plane recalled a time down in Johnson's home state of Mississippi when blacks were ordered to sit in the back of a bus. "I could afford to ride first class, but I save money so I fly coach," Johnson says. "I'm sitting there watching white people walk up and use that bathroom, and it pissed me off. "I asked the guy, 'Why am I different? I took a bath this morning just like everybody else. Why am I different?' " After explaining that the rear bathroom was for passengers riding coach, the steward finally relented and let Johnson use the one that was more convenient. The irony of that steward being the same color as the vast majority of the audience that embraces the blues was not lost on Johnson. When he blistered Grant Park's Petrillo Band Shell stage with a set of pure, righteous electric blues rarely heard anymore anywhere during the final night of the recent Chicago Blues Fest, the overwhelming majority of the crowd was white. In Europe, Johnson - like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and just about every American blues musician who ever crossed the Atlantic - finds white crowds that are much more appreciative of the blues than Americans. "I'm very well known in Europe, in France," Johnson says. Ever since he grew up around Holly Springs, Miss., Johnson has never fully escaped the undertones of racism. He was able to sidestep Jim Crow's shadow playing piano and singing in gospel groups with family members before moving to Chicago in 1950, where he began playing professionally with Slim Willis. Influenced by both Buddy Guy and Otis Rush, Johnson honed his chops on stage alongside Rush, Magic Sam, Freddy King, Albert King and Eddy Clearwater before setting out on his own in the early 1960s. Stints with Jimmy Dawkins and a tour of Japan with Otis Rush led to recording solo records for Alligator Records and Delmart Records. But Johnson's career was derailed in 1988 when his tour van crashed, killing keyboardist St. James Bryant and bassist Larry Exum. Injuries from the accident caused Johnson to take a break from music. He returned in 1994 to record for Verve Records, and with his brother, soul musician Syl Johnson. Now, when he isn't touring Europe or playing a blues festival in the U.S. with his band - guitarist Mike Wheeler, bassist Larry Williams, drummer Big Ray Stewart and pianist Roosevelt Purefoy - Johnson stays close to home in suburban Chicago. Old pal Buddy Guy provides a regular gig "two or three times out of a month" at his club, Legends. During the week, Johnson can be found at a Chicago restaurant with the volume turned down on some acoustic blues or jazz "dinner music." "I don't consider myself a good jazz player," Johnson admits, "but I play jazz ballads, and I play ... probably 75 to 80 percent piano." The blues remains Johnson's priority - and the brunt of his frustration. Not with the music itself, but with an audience that serves as a constant reminder of a cultural divide in his own hometown of Chicago, where his own race "rates blues low." "Did you ever hear the term 'brainwash'?" Johnson asks. "If somebody keeps telling you something is no good, if you're not a strong person, they fall for it. There could be a lady, she loves blues, loves Muddy Waters, but she goes to a store and is afraid to ask for a Muddy Waters record because of the rating." The hip-hop of today? "Totally garbage," Johnson insists. As for the radio stations that play the records and advertise the big music events, they aren't helping to boost that blues' rating, either, Johnson maintains. "Why do you play 'Sweet Home Chicago' by Eric Clapton, but why not the original people?" Johnson says. He pauses, but frustration simmers in his pause. "When Mick Jagger comes to town, they advertise him three or four months in advance. The (Chicago) Blues Festival, they say something a few days before. They don't publicize it. The biggest festival in Chicago ... they don't publicize." Not that this bluesman needs publicity. The blues poured out of Johnson's guitar at the Chicago Blues Festival with every bit the living authenticity of B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush - combined. "I don't go through life patting myself on the back," he says. "I look up in the sky and say thanks that I'm still fortunate that I still have my voice, still have my youth. I'm an old man, but I carry myself as a youth." An old kind-hearted youth. "The first thing you gotta do is be a kind person. I just didn't get like that. I've been like that all my life." Note to that airline: Flying the friendly skies could stand a little more kind-heartedness. "It's better than it was 40, 50, 200 years ago," Johnson says. "Go back far enough and people like me was a slave. It's better, but it's not as well as I would like for it to be. "It is the way it is." | 
