PIONEERS
From urban blues maverick to ‘Superfly’ funkster, the life, career and enduring influence of Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson deserves a long-overdue reexamination. Watson’s 40-plus-year career saw him negotiate his way through, arguably, the most explosive period in musical history and, unlike so many, he somehow managed to keep his ear to the ground and his music relevant to the times
John Watson Jr was born in Houston, Texas, on 3 February 1935. As a child he learned piano from his father, John Sr. However, like so many young black kids coming of age in the mid-to-late 1940s, it was the mighty T-Bone Walker, best known for his iconic composition Stormy Monday, that grabbed his ears and made him want to be a guitarist. T-Bone Walker’s influence over the subsequent course that blues and rock ’n’ roll took cannot be overestimated. Aslew of great recordings from the late 40s found their way into the hearts of everyone from BB King to Chuck Berry to Jimi Hendrix – and young Watson was no exception.
Johnny acquired his first guitar courtesy of his grandfather, a preacher, who agreed to let Jr have one on the condition that he “never use it to play the Devil’s music” –namely, the blues. After his parents’ separation in 1950, Johnny moved with his mother to Los Angeles and quickly became a feature of the LA blues scene, clearly ignoring his grandfather’s request!
By the age of 15 Watson was working regularly in the city’s juke joints playing both guitar and piano. He also took time to check out the jazz clubs, too, and heard giants such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Later in life, Johnny mused that, at that time, jazz and blues were akin to two sides of the same coin. Musicians in those days embraced both equally and it was, effectively, recording studio contracts that determined whether an artist would grow to specialise in one or the other.
In 1952, aged just 17 and billed as ‘Young John Watson’, Johnny made his first recordings on piano for Federal Records. Songs such as Pachuko Hop and Motor Head Baby found Watson playing the typical driving R&B piano of the time. Within afew years, however, the piano would be replaced by the guitar as the main instrument driving the rhythm along –and Watson would be right there at the heart of it.
1954 saw the release of the movie Johnny Guitar, a Western that starred Joan Crawford. After seeing the film, the artist formerly known as Young John Watson became Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson and, from that moment on, the guitar became Watson’s main mode of expression.
Then, out of the blue, came a track that can only be described as out of this world. Johnny was still only 19 years old when he recorded Space Guitar in 1954. Even today, it sounds extraordinary with the guitar tone changing from bone dry to reverb laden on a lick to lick basis. Watson’s
