Hello John, Johnny Watson played with a litany of the greats and influenced people like Frank Zappa but you seldom hear his name mentioned in the same conversation as with the biggies. He was a loud, colorful and kick ass player. He died of heart falure on stage in 1996. I'm thinking this is where a lot of artists would like to go out.. This is a long articl and I'll post the rest next week. It's a good read. His birthday was last Thursday BTW. Char's is open after a long absence. The old hands speak reverently about the place. The new owners have revamped and revitalized the iconic Blues joint. It remains to be seen as to what's in store but it's good to see it open again. Plenty to do and hear this week. The days are warming up but the nights still have a bite to them. Hard to sit in the shade in the afternoon and enjoy an outdoor gig. PBS has a cool fundraiser ccoming up on Feb. 27 at Frasher's Smokehouse, 32nd St. & Indian School. The management at Frasher's has expressed an interest in getting involved in the Blues scene and we're most happy to have them to collaborate with. Make your plans to join us. The food is top shelf and you'll se ahd hear some great Blues on a nice Sunday afternoon. Have a week!! Jim Crawford Phoenix Blues Society |
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COLD SHOTT and The Hurricane Horns The Sugar Thieves Gary Zak & The Outbacks Hans Olson Rocket 88s JC& The Rockers Carvin Jones
Poppy Harpman & The Storm https://poppyharpman.com/ Hoodoo Casters RHYTHM ROOM WESTSIDE BLUES & JAZZ https://westsideblues.com/
Nina Curri Paris James Mother Road Trio Blues Review Band Reverbnationbluesmanmike Mike Eldred
Big Daddy D & The Dynamites Facebook www.bigdadddyd.com Cadillac Assembly Line Facebook Innocent Joe and the Hostile Witnesses Facebook Chuck Hall Facebook Pop Top Facebook Tommy Grills Band Facebook Sweet Baby Ray SweetBabyRaysBlues.com Thermal Blues Express Thermal Blues Express.com Common Ground Blues Band Facebook Billy G & The Kids billgarvin.com
OUT & ABOUT
Tuesday, February 8 Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., Hideaway Lounge, Phoenix Gypsy & Hooter’s Blues JAM, 6 p.m., Pho Cao, Scottsdale Wednesday February 9 Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., Bone Haus Brewing, fountain Hills Tres Amigos, 7 p.m., Pioneer RV Resort, Phoenix Tool Shed JAM, 7 p.m, Blooze Bar, Phoenix Johnny Miller JAM, 7 p.m., Coop’s, Glendale Thursday, February 10 Leon J, 5 p.m., Cousin Vinny’s Pizza, Peoria Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., wild Vine Uncorked, Chandler Hans Olson, 6 p.m., Handlebar Pub, Apache Junction Friday, February 11 Carol Pacey & The Honey shakers, 9 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix JC & The Rockers, 5 p.m., River Bottom Bar, Florenc Hoodoo Casters, 5 p.m., Mountain View Pub, Cave Creek Eric Ramsey, 4 p.m., Belle’s Nashville Kitchen, Scottsdale Tres Amigos, 7 p.m., Peaks & Valleys Restaurant, Phoenix Blues Review Band, 7 p.m., All American, Fountain Hills Leon J, 12:30 p.m., DA Ranch, Cornville Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., Playa II, Phoenix Saturday, February 12 Smokestack Lightning, Big Daddy D & The Dynamiets w/Betty Jo, Aaron McCall Band, 7 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Sugar Thieves, 6 p.m., Kazamierz, Scottsdale Rocket 88s, 6 p.m., Rip’s Bar, Phoenix Innocent Joe, 7 p.m., Divided Wine, Gilbert Blues Review Band, 10 a.m., Crisis 22, Mesa Ramsey/Roberson, 7 p.m., Wandering donkey, Scottsdale Leon J, 1 p.m., DA Ranch, Cornville Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., Raceway Bar, Maricpoa Sunday, February 13 Leon J, 12 p.m., DA Ranch, Cornville Monday, February 14 Hans Olson, 7 p.m., Time Out Lounge (Every Monday), Tempe
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Thank you for your support of our Annual Blues Blast and Phoenix Blues Society!
Blues Blast 2022 Saturday March 19th, 2022 Margaret T. Hance Park
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| Unsung Hero
It seems odd to call someone whose soulful guitar work and flamboyant showmanship influenced artists as diverse (and acclaimed) as Etta James, Frank Zappa, Prince, and Rick James a “forgotten hero.” But, unfortunately, Johnny “Guitar” Watson never achieved the level of fame that those he inspired did—a point that is painfully underscored by the fact that he’s occasionally confused with “Wah- Wah” Watson (also a wonderful player who deserves praise). Johnny “Guitar” Watson had a groundbreaking—if up-and-down— career that spanned five decades of American popular music. A career that included everything from a Grammy nomination to having his drug problem spotlighted on VH1’s Behind the Music. On February 3, 1935, Wilma Watson gave birth to John Watson Jr. in Houston, Texas. His father, John Sr., played piano as a part-time job, and ended up teaching the instrument to his son. At age 11, Watson’s gospel-playing grandfather offered him an acoustic guitar if he promised he wouldn’t play “the devil’s music”—meaning blues and R&B. Whether or not he ever intended to keep that promise, under the spell of fellow Texans T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Watson soon broke it. In the liner notes for The Very Best of Johnny “Guitar” Watson, David Ritz quotes Watson as saying, “T-Bone had all the flash and fire, which I wanted.” Unsatisfied with the volume of his flattop, Watson claimed he stole an early DeArmond pickup and screwed it under the strings. The pickup’s cable screwed on to both pickup and amplifier, hampering his early performance style. Or, as he put it, “If you try to go anywhere, you better bring everything with you.” By age 12, Watson secured a record contract, thanks to the help of DJ and R&B legend Johnny Otis. In what would become a pattern when it came to label relations, the tween musician bucked the higher-ups by refusing to record children’s songs, and was soon dropped. But Watson remained undiscouraged. By his teens, he was gigging with Texas bluesmen Albert Collins and Johnny Copeland. In 1950, John Sr. and Wilma separated. Wilma took young John Jr. to Los Angeles, where he soon won several talent shows and was discovered by Amos Milburn and Chuck Higgins. Watson’s first recording experience came as a 17-year-old pianist playing on Higgins’ hit “Pachuko Hop.” On the single’s flip side, he made his vocal debut with “Motorhead Baby.” He would re-record the latter a year later, when he had his own record deal. On January 20, 1953, two weeks before his 18th birthday, Young John Watson (as he was then billed) recorded his first single for Federal Records. He was backed by Amos Milburn’s band on a tune called “Highway 60.” The next year he recorded the seminal single “Space Guitar.” Often cited as pioneering the use of feedback and reverb, there is, in fact, no feedback on the record. However, the engineer did randomly crank the studio reverb settings on this Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown-style jump blues instrumental, giving it a unique, spaced-out feel. In 1996, Watson told Goldmine magazine: “Reverb had just come out. Everybody really didn’t understand what it was all about, man, and I was experimenting with it.” Though the record has become a classic and a collector’s item, the world was not yet ready for it. “Space Guitar” was just one more failed single for Federal, and the label soon dropped Watson’s contract.
In the ’50s, Modern Records was home to B.B. King and Etta James. In 1954, its legendary A&R director, Joe Bihari, went to the movies with Watson to catch Johnny Guitar, a Nicholas Ray Western starring Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden. The movie inspired the Los Angeles guitarist to modify his own stage name. “It sounded like sort of an outlaw or gangster name, but he was a good guy, like Lone Ranger, you dig?” he told interviewer Jas Obrecht. Modern had started a blues subsidiary in Los Angeles called RPM. Bihari and his brother signed the newly dubbed Johnny “Guitar” Watson to the label, and in 1955 he gave them a hit with his cover of Earl King’s “Those Lonely, Lonely Nights.” The E% tune opens with an unaccompanied B% guitar arpeggio, played at the first fret with a raw electric tone that must have been either a revelation or heresy in the mid ’50s. The solo consists almost entirely of one note: screaming E% triplets hammered home over the 12/8 ballad groove. It’s no wonder a 16-year-old Frank Zappa had his mind blown. “He worked that one note to death,” Zappa told Obrecht in 1982. “If you were playing the rhythm-and-blues circuit, you had to learn to play that solo note-for-note.” Watson took off on tour with Eddie Jones, aka “Guitar Slim,” learning the art of showmanship from the man who inspired Jimi Hendrix. The two guitarists would ride on each other’s shoulders out into the audience, trailing 30-foot cords. On the Chitlin’ Circuit, playing behind your back and with your teeth was part of the two players’ performances a dozen years before Hendrix introduced these tricks to young white audiences. Bihari’s experimentation with then-new double-tracking studio techniques allowed Watson to play both guitar and piano on sides like “Someone Cares for Me,” “Ruben,” and “Three Hours Past Midnight.” The latter is a stunning slow-blues guitar workout based on B.B. King’s 1951 interpretation of the Lowell Fulson tune “3 O’Clock Blues.” Watson’s use of his thumb instead of a pick gives the notes a snappier sound than King’s plectrum-driven style, while his “ice-pick” tone also lent the record a very different mood than the smoother King version. This side also enticed Zappa, who reportedly played the song three times a day on the jukebox at a local restaurant during his school lunch hour. In 1955, once again without a record deal, Watson performed on package tours with all the stars of the day, including Sam Cooke, B.B. King, Louis Jordan, Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, the Shirelles, Ben E. King, and the Coasters. In 1957, Watson went into the studio for Keen Records to rework a piano-and-vocal demo called “Love Bandit” that he had recorded while at Modern Records. The resulting full-band version became “Gangster of Love.” Though sometimes touted as an early “rap” record—not the least by Watson himself—“Gangster” was more in the tradition of talking R&B as practiced by Louis Jordan and the Coasters. It was the beginning of an image makeover that would in later years evolve into early “gangsta,” decked out in “bling” and “pimpin’ the hos.” Once again Watson’s work proved more influential than lucrative. Though the song was not a hit at the time, it has been covered a lot since then. A version appears on a pre-Columbia Records Johnny Winter recording, but it was the one on Steve Miller’s Sailor that finally earned the struggling Texan some serious money. As he engaged in more label-hopping for the next few years, Watson cut “Looking Back” in 1961 for Escort Records. That tune would be covered in England by both John Mayall—who credited Watson—and Spencer Davis, who didn’t. In 1961, thanks again to Johnny Otis, Watson ended up at Syd Nathan’s King Records, where he had an R&B Top 10 hit with a string-drenched slow blues tune called “Cuttin’ In.” His first and only full LP for King, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, packaged new material with remakes of tunes from earlier Watson records, including “Gangster of Love.” The failure of Johnny “Guitar” Watson to chart led the guitar slinger to Crown Records, where he briefly teamed up with blues legend Bobby “Blue” Bland for the rare recording 2 in Blues. By 1963, the popularity of blues within the African American community was waning— and yet it still hadn’t fully caught on with the rock ’n’ roll generation. Watson attempted to revitalize his career in 1964 by teaming up with singer Larry Williams, who’d garnered fame with his cuts of “Bony Moronie” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy.” They even formed a label—Jola Records (later Jowat)—whose moniker combined letters from their first names, but their first album was released in England on Decca. Williams introduced the relatively unknown Watson to the British press and public as “Elvis Presley’s guitarist.” Having successfully sold that fairy tale, the duo implied that their joint effort, The Larry Williams Show featuring Johnny “Guitar” Watson with the Stormsville Shakers, was a live recording. It was, in fact, recorded in the studio. Veracity aside, the pair’s R&B/ rock ’n’ roll sound went over well in England, prompting the American label Okeh to sign them. Commercial success was their goal, and to that end they were determined to keep up with the times. In 1967, they added vocals to the Cannonball Adderly hit instrumental “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” which was written by Joe Zawinul and later became a hit for American pop band the Buckinghams. Williams and and Watson also recorded a cool cover of the Yardbirds’ hit “For Your Love,” and in 1968 joined with the Kaleidoscope (a band that, at one point, featured a young David Lindley) for a sitar-driven piece of soul/ psychedelia called “Nobody.” The duo became a big hit on the British Northern Soul circuit with tunes like “Two for the Price of One” and “Too Late,” but unfortunately for 6-string fans, this style of music required putting Watson’s distinctive guitar playing on the back burner.
The early ’70s found Watson picking up his guitar again, first as a session player for artists like keyboardist George Duke and his famous early idolizer Frank Zappa. Watson also knew the Adderlys—Cannonball and his brother Nat—because of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” and when the brothers formed their own production company they helped their friend get a deal with Fantasy Records in Berkeley, California.
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