Lonnie Johnson played a key role not only in the history of the blues, but also in that of the guitar. He was one of the very first, perhaps the very first, to conceive of the guitar as a solo instrument played note by note with a plectrum. He contributed to making the guitar as noble an instrument as the violin or the piano. In fact, it was as a violinist and pianist that the young Lonnie Johnson entertained the taverns and brothels of the Storyville district of New Orleans. The influence of New Orleans jazz will always be felt in his music. Sent to the European front during the First World War, Lonnie played guitar and banjo in the U.S. Army's "negro" bands. On his return, he moved to Saint Louis. His guitar playing, elegant arabesques and vibrant blue notes, enabled him to record continuously from 1925 onwards, as a soloist or in a duo with another guitar pioneer, Italian-American Eddie Lang, accompanying countless singers (Victoria Spivey, Texas Alexander, Georgia White...) and orchestras (Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds).
A forgotten model, but imitated. Yet it was his records of ballads and blues, sung in a somewhat affected, bittersweet voice, accompanied by a sturdy St. Louis pianist like Roosevelt Sykes or Lil Armstrong, that made him perhaps the most popular of pre-war black musicians.
With his impeccable diction, obvious education, professionalism and aristocratic manners inherited from his hometown, Johnson was a model of success and class for many black Americans. Josh White, Scrapper Blackwell, Big Bill Broonzy... and even Robert Johnson! Then T-Bone Walker and B. B. King, his most obvious successors in post-war electric blues. By this time, Lonnie Johnson - despite a few last hits in 1948 like "Tomorrow Night" - was much less in favor with black audiences. He was forced to work in a variety of manual occupations. Very wary of the white craze for the blues from the 60s onwards, and refusing to be pigeonholed as a bluesman, Lonnie Johnson nevertheless toured Europe a few times.
At the time of his death, however, he had been reduced to working as a porter in a Toronto hotel. Despite its obvious monotony, Lonnie Johnson's work remains a milestone.
G. H.
