Page 9 - BiTS_07_JULY_2021

The Nitecrawlers remember Tommy Johnson...
extracted from Henry’s Blues Letter #62, used with permission
Tommy Johnson chose to walk a hard road, no question he was one rough dude, a real piece of graft,
“Tommy wouldn’t even pick up a shoe for nobody, he didn’t do no kinda work,” reckoned his brother.
Nevertheless he turned out to be one of the most influential and original of the country bluesmen, and as it
happens, another big favourite of us Nitecrawlers.

Born into a large musical family who farmed the George Miller plantation ’til
they moved to Crystal Spring, Tommy learned guitar from his brother until he
took up with a woman old enough to be his mother and hightailed it north to
Will Dockery’s plantation where he came under the spell of a whole bunch of
musicians, but particularly Charlie Patton and Willie Brown.

Two years later when Tommy returned alone to Crystal Springs he had
developed an impressive guitar style and a confident falsetto singing voice, but
was also a compulsive womaniser, a gambler and an acute alcoholic, who would
drink pretty much anything that was going.

He carried round a rabbit’s foot charm and got himself a sinister reputation by
openly encouraging the story that his new-found talent was the result of some
sort of deal with the devil at the crossroads, long before a namesake was to
claim the same thing.

Tommy Johnson had also become a showboating performer and Houston Stackhouse recalls being
mesmerised by his remarkable routine. “He’d kick the guitar, flip it, turn it on the back of his head and be
playin’ it…he’d straddle over it like he was ridin’ a mule—people loved to see that.”

It meant Tommy was in demand, playing the jukes and the streets of Jackson, and that’s where talent agent
H.C.Speir found him. Speir recalled that Tommy stuttered all the time, except when he was singing, but
guessed that it might be due to the antiseptic, canned heat (cooker fuel. Ed), and jake that Tommy was
regularly consuming.
Speir had told Tommy to come up with some original songs and Tommy gave him 'Big Road Blues' 'Cool
Water Blues' 'Maggie Campbell' 'Canned Heat Blues' 'Bye Bye Blues' and 'Big Fat Momma Blues' all six of
them deemed good enough for release by Victor records.

None of the discs were big sellers but they hit the Delta area like a silver bullet, inspiring a whole bunch of
players like Howlin’ Wolf, Houston Stackhouse, Robert Nighthawk, and Son House.

The trouble with Tommy was that he was just never as serious about his career as he was about drinking. He
did cut a few more good sides, this time for Paramount, but too many Sterno and shoe polish buzzes had all
but turned him into a has-been.

His regular wanderings and never ending succession of ‘wives’ didn’t help. He rode the rails and hiked the
roads and even spent a while touring with Dr. Simpson’s medicine show, but it was always with a bottle
close by.

H.C.Speir remembered putting up a hundred and fifty dollar bond to get Tommy out of Jackson jail for
drunkenness, only for Tommy to jump bail. A disgruntled Speir went down to Louisiana and brought him
back to do his time.
Thing was, Tommy didn’t want money or fame and was quite happy working those jukes and house parties
just so long as he could drink and womanise, and he was performing one such party his brother recalled,
“sitting around, playing, fooling around” when he suddenly just fell over, “he asked for a chew of tobacco,
and just died.”
Suppose there’s no way that us Nitecrawlers could argue that Tommy Johnson was one of the good guys, but
for a short while he was a real original. That great guitar style, that devil story and that playing the guitar
behind his neck was all way, way, before anybody else. Oh and he also had a few great tunes that pretty
much everybody copied one way or another, so we sometimes wonder just what Tommy Johnson might have
done if only he could have stayed clear of that Canned Heat.