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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Question for Barbecue Bob
Question for Barbecue Bob
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Minor Blues
52 posts
Nov 22, 2016
9:07 AM
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Good day, Barbecue Bob.
Driving in to work today, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson was playing through my stereo, and I got to thinking....
He was from the Boston area, and he did some recording in the late 80's, early 90's, etc.
Did you ever cross paths with him or any members of the Magic Rockers? Did you ever play with them or record?
Any stories you'd like to share?
Thanks!
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barbequebob
3316 posts
Nov 22, 2016
10:58 AM
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I went on the road with him in 1988 in Canada and his band members changed fairly frequently for a variety of reasons. I never got a chance to record with him at any point.
Some stories I can't mention because some aren't ones one would want to print (and don't press me on them at all).
While I was on the road in Canada with him, I got the kind of treatment you never see much on a local level, where ordinary people wouyld actually volunteer to be a roadie for you and not let you carry anything at all, which really was quite the mind blower for me.
He seldom called out the key of a tune and often just went right into it and if you're one who needs set lists with the list of keys to play in, it can be a freaking horror show and/or a frightening experience for you. However, I had one BIG advatnage over the vast majority of harp players was the fact that I also play a little bit of guitar and just like while I was gigging with the late, great Jimmy Rogers some years earlier, I watched where his hands and fingers where on the fretboard and unlike what you too often see in too many open jams, I made DAMNED SURE I was paying extremely close attention to everything he was doing and very quickly noticed that certain intros would always be played in certain keys so that I didn't need to be told what key a tune was in and just the minute I heard the lick, I know exactly what I had to do.
Even tho he did spend some time playing with Muddy Waters, he was really more from the West Side school of Chicago blues, where it was much more guitar oriented than the South Side stuff (ala Muddy, Wolf, LW, SBWII, Elmore James and others) and a big influence to what he was doing had a clearly heavy influence from the sound of Magic Sam, someone he spent some time gigging with and I had to quickly adjust what I was doing to suit that sound because what would've been right in a Muddy Waters oriented band was NOT going to work with him one bit as a general rule and too many harp players tend to think one size fits all and these very same players wonder why they don't get hired or they get dissed.
There would be times if you messed up the groove, ESPECIALLY if you messed up the time, I would guarantee you that he'd be on your ass in a freaking heartbeat, ESPECIALLY if you were a drummer or a bass player, and from my own personal experience gigging with many black blues musicians (or even being around black musicians as a general rule) you mess that time up, you're either in for a ration of s**t or you get fired and tho the drummer shall remain nameless, I saw him stop at the side of a highway in the middle of the night, take out the drummer's equipment and luggage, and left him out there on the highway and the drummer had to thumb a freaking ride home because he royally screwed up the time (and as far as I'm concerned, he DESERVED it and ANY drummer of bass player with lousy time is a lousy drummer or bass player and there's ZERO gray area when it comes to that).
Some of the nights we stayed at hotels and some nights we had an entire house to ourselves to sleep in. Once, the house where we were staying was about a block from the Labatt's beer brewery and there was a motel we stayed at that was next a place that had a name that I would associate as being a steak house and, surprise, turned out to be a strip joint instead.
There was an incident where a "fan" came over to where we stayed and turned a few of us to some indulgences (I'll let you guess about waht they were) and then all of a sudden, he says to Luther, "You mind if I call you nigger?"
I was ready to beat this guy's butt to a freaking pulp, but the look on Luther's face told me no, and then Luther says to him, "I gots a name! Use it!"
That's it for the moment.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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Minor Blues
54 posts
Nov 22, 2016
1:45 PM
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VERY interesting!
Would you elaborate on the more specific differences in adjusting your harp approach in Luther's band vs. Muddy's?
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waltertore
2963 posts
Nov 22, 2016
3:42 PM
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I can attest to Bob's memories as I have the same. I learned a lot from the old guys on how to deal with music and band members. I actually put a couple guys out on the side of the highway many hundreds of miles from our homebase because they got too loaded and screwed up the gig. Back then there were territories and if you messed up in one you may not ever get a gig in that area again so the stakes were high for such screw ups. I had no problem acting like my mentors because it cleared the air to get it right or get out :-) Today is much too nicey nice for my bones. Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year in the Tunnel of Dreams Studio.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
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Piro39
121 posts
Nov 22, 2016
5:51 PM
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The guitar player that BBQ Bob is referring to was Luther Georgie Boy Snake Johnson who played with Muddy in the 60's and ended up in the Boston area putting his own band together after he left Muddy. There is also another one named Luther Guitar Jr Johnson probably also from Chicago. I used to do one of his songs but I can't recall the name right now.
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Sundancer
63 posts
Nov 22, 2016
8:16 PM
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If y'all think those old generation band leaders were brutal, try working for Dell. Michael Dell sacks thousands of people in one go, not just a drummer.
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barbequebob
3318 posts
Nov 23, 2016
9:09 AM
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@Piro39 -- I was definitely talking about Luther Guitar Junior Johnson, who I gigged with. I've met the other one, Luther Georgia Boy/Snake Johnson, who died of cancer in 1975 and I never got a chance to sit in or gig with him at all. Both gigged with Muddy at some point in time and both from Chicago.
Old school black band leaders as well as old school white big band jazz band leaders were equally brutal and it's often described as ruling their banfds with an iron fist, or if you listen to the now infamous Buddy Rich berates his band tapes, they wouldn't put up with the bull crap you see in an open jam one bit and they were extremely demanding people, musically, and when that band has your name on it, it's your behind on the line and when anything in the slightest gets messed up, just like you were a store manager or the owner of any business, again, it's your butt on the line and you're the one responsible for both the good as wellas the bad stuff under your watch, even if you didn't do it yourself personally, and too many people just don't understand that music is not just an art form, it's also a business at the same time and when you make bad musical decisions like hiring musicians whos time sucks, it makes the band as well as you, the band leader look like a total moron (because that musician helping to drive customers out of the damned club and/or boring the living crap out of the audience) and when you gotta deal with the club owner/talent buyer/booking agent/manager, you, the bandleader are the ones who get the ration of s**t, first, and even more so if the club owner/talent buyer/booking agent/manager is/was a former pro musician, and trust me, those guys don't miss a damned thing wheras if the owner/talent buyer/manager is not a musician, but one of those types I called a QBA (which means a quick buck a**hole), if you lose even 1/3 of the crowd or the crowd drinks nothing but juice or bottled water and nurses it all damned night, you get a ration of s**t and you don't get hired back.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by barbequebob on Nov 25, 2016 9:19 AM
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kudzurunner
6082 posts
Nov 24, 2016
12:29 AM
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It sounds as though Luther didn't believe in "safe spaces" and "diversity." In today's terms, he was more of a conservative. Excellence--or else!
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The Iceman
2985 posts
Nov 24, 2016
4:48 AM
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Then there were the famous jam sessions at Minton's and the other jazz clubs in NYC during the birth of bebop...if you couldn't cut it, the audience might rush the stage, pick you up and physically throw you out the front door yelling "Don't come back until you learn to play!"
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The Iceman
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Sherwin
228 posts
Nov 24, 2016
5:53 AM
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Adam.......are you sneaking politics into this thread?
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kudzurunner
6083 posts
Nov 24, 2016
7:03 AM
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I'm poking lighthearted fun at those on both the Left and the Right who take their cultural politics too seriously, by way of pinpointing what made those old-school players great.
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barbequebob
3319 posts
Nov 25, 2016
9:24 AM
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I knew what Adam was doing because if you want a really good band, you HAVE to be a perfectionist and that means that unlike jammers, it's YOUR JOB to pay attention to EVERY minute detail of what's going on besides the damned solos, which means you gotta be on top of EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!! If you put up with crap, crap is all you're gonna get and reputations get ruined even faster now with the internet, especially now with blogs and social media, which makes everybody a critic. Besides, if you hire musicians with lousy time, you hired lousy musicians and that means you put out lousy music and the audience will either totally tune you out or leave the club and don't be surprised that by half way thru the second of three shows you do, the club gets emptied out.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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1847
3841 posts
Nov 25, 2016
10:06 AM
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you all need to get a grip..
80 percent of success is just showing up. no child left behind.
if i had a nickel for every time someone said, we would like to play a song off our new record. heck anyone with a thousand dollars can make a recording. that wasn't the case not too long ago.
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Fil
223 posts
Nov 25, 2016
11:25 AM
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Jammers need love too...don't they?
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Phil Pennington
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