Mississippi blues singer and guitarist. Born into a large family near Terry, Mississippi,
about 20 miles south of the city of Jackson, Johnson grew up in nearby Crystal Springs.
As a teenager, he began learning guitar and African American folksongs from older
family members. Before World War I, he began making extended trips northward to
Mississippi’s Delta region to work on plantations and perform music. There he
encountered and learned blues music from such established musicians as Charlie Patton
and Willie Brown. His brother, Reverend LeDell Johnson, stated that Tommy claimed to
have learned how to play the guitar well by making a pact with the devil. He returned to
Crystal Springs and taught blues to his three brothers and other local musicians. For
much of the 1920s he participated in the blues activity of Crystal Springs, Jackson, and
the Delta, also making frequent trips southward to Tylertown and to Bogalusa and New
Orleans, Louisiana. Married four times, he never sustained a stable family life,
maintaining the same pattern of rambling and making up to his death. He made
commercial recordings of his blues in two sessions for Victor Records in 1928 in
Memphis and one session for Paramount Records at the end of 1929 in Grafton,
Wisconsin. He was addicted to alcohol, which he consumed in truly legendary fashion all
of his adult life, frequently in the form of cooking fuel, shoe polish, hair tonic, or rubbing
alcohol. Johnson died of a massive heart attack at the end of an engagement playing
music at a house party in Crystal Springs.
Only seventeen recordings by Johnson survive. All but one are blues, and most of
these adhere closely to the standard twelve-bar, three-line blues form. They are heavily
indebted to a shared tradition of lyric, melodic, and instrumental phrases and ideas, with
many correspondences to the phrases and ideas of other blues performers in the local
traditions in which Johnson participated. His recordings include three blues performed in
alternate takes, another pair recorded almost two years apart, and a song, “Alcohol and
Jake Blues,” that extends the theme of an earlier recording, “Canned Heat Blues.” Both
of these latter pieces were personal in nature and dealt with his drinking habits. Most of
his other blues dealt with themes of rambling and unstable relationships with women.
Because of their heavy reliance on traditional elements and the existence of several
alternative versions, Johnson’s blues serve as an excellent example of folk processes at
work in composition and performance. His seventeen recordings, along with those of his
mentors, associates, and many disciples, demonstrate that he varied his pieces
considerably during performance.
Johnson interacted with the top level of Mississippi blues artists in the 1920s and
1930s, including Charlie Patton, Willie Brown, Ishman Bracey, Charlie McCoy, Rubin
Lacy, and Walter Vincson. The strong influence of his music can be heard in subsequent
recordings by Vincson, Willie Lofton, Shirley Griffith, K.C. Douglas, Babe Stovall,
Roosevelt Holts, Houston Stackhouse, Boogie Bill Webb, and a host of others, all of
whom learned directly from Johnson. Many others learned songs from his commercial
records. One of his songs, “Big Road Blues,” has been especially widely performed over the years since Johnson recorded it in 1928, while the popular blues-rock group Canned
Heat took its name in the 1960s from another of Johnson’s blues.
David Evans
References
Evans, David. 1971. Tommy Johnson. London: Studio Vista.
——, comp. 1979. The Legacy of Tommy Johnson. Matchbox SDM 224. Sound Recording.
Johnson, Tommy. 1990. Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order. Document DOCD-
5001. Sound Recording.