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216 8 Blues Revival in the ’60s: Comeback Again Rediscovered Lonnie Johnson’s situation in the later 1950s was well described in liner notes to his first comeback album in 1960: “Lonnie’s slip into obscurity was so complete this time that many persons thought he was dead.” Alternatively, one writer claimed he had seen Lonnie down and out in Chicago in 1958. Indeed, Lonnie commented, “I’ve been dead four or five times. But I always came back. . . . I always knew that someday, somehow, somebody would find me.”1 In late 1959 Lonnie was working as a janitor in the Ben Franklin Hotel in Philadelphia. Chris Albertson (who had come to the U.S. from Denmark not too long before) “rediscovered” him, which led to what amounted to his third comeback. Albertson subsequently became a respected jazz record producer and author of the definitive biography of Bessie Smith. At the time, however, he was a DJ at jazz radio station WHAT in Philadelphia.. (In an interview, Chris said, “The woman who owned the station was rather strange. The FM station was all White [music] and the AM station was all Black. And she had a white dog named FM and a black dog named AM.”2 ) In my interview with Albertson, I asked him how the rediscovery happened: I was on the air seven days a week . . . , and I played everything from [saxophone jazzman John] Coltrane to Ma Rainey. Blues Revival in the ’60s: Comeback Again 217 One day on air in 1959 I said, “I wonder whatever happened to Lonnie Johnson?” . . . Then I got a call from Elmer Snowden, who said, “Well, I just saw Lonnie in a supermarket; he’s in Philly.” [A jazz guitarist and banjo-player who also played saxophone, Snowden’s first notable experience in music came when he led a band in the early 1920s, joined a little later by a young pianist named Duke Ellington; the band then became “The Washingtonians.”] And then I got a call from someone who said, “I work at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel and there’s someone here, a janitor, named Lonnie Johnson. I don’t know if that’s the one you’re looking for—he’s never mentioned any music—but I can tell you he’s very careful with his hands, he always uses gloves.” So I went down to the hotel . . . And when he came in, I easily recognized him. We talked, I got his phone number, and I then said I wanted someone to hear him. He had a guitar, a beat-up old guitar. I called John Hammond [of Columbia Records], whom I’d never met, and I called Orrin Keepnews of Riverside Records, whom I’d never met, and said I was going to have Lonnie Johnson over to my apartment to play on Saturday. Much to my surprise, they both said they’d be there. So I had both Lonnie and Elmer over (they’d never played together before). I had an old British tape recorder, and I taped them as they played. Hammond was his usual self, saying, “Oh, it’s marvelous, marvelous !” (That was his favorite saying.) John and Orrin talked to Elmer and Lonnie, they all had a wonderful time, and they left—and nothing happened. So, a little later I took the tape to Bob Weinstock at Prestige Records. He listened to the tape, and then he said, “Let’s do an album.” So, we did.”3 (Amusingly, Lawrence Cohn, former Columbia/Epic Records Vice President, told me that John Hammond, who was famous for his discovery of great musicians, from Bessie Smith to Count Basie to Dylan and Springsteen, tended to discount Lonnie’s importance, mostly because Hammond couldn’t claim credit for discovering him. Larry took special delight in needling Hammond whenever he came across something else attesting to Lonnie’s greatness. This is “inside baseball,” Columbia Records-style, but fun anyway.) 218 THE ORIGINAL GUITAR HERO AND THE POWER OF MUSIC A little later I will discuss the album they made and other things; but first I need to set the scene with some developments in the early 1960s that were of major importance for music and for broader societal matters. Blues and Folk Music Revivals Starting in the later 1950s with a few intrepid White blues lovers and 78 record collectors, several of whom were also writers, interest in the older blues musicians developed and then increased into the early 1960s...

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