Paying dues finally pays for "Johnny B. Goode"

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

March 5 / 1989

By Harper Barnes / Post-Dispatch Critic at Large

When musicians say a colleague has paid his dues, they could be talking about 10 or even 15 years of hard work and hard times before the big break came along. In that context, Johnnie Johnson is a champion of dues. He is 64 years old and has been playing fine jazz and blues piano for more than 40 years, but not until this year does he finally have a record out under his own name.

It is called ''Cool Hand Johnnie'' and is on Pulsar, a relatively new blues label out of St. Charles. The only possible complaint about ''Cool Hand Johnnie,'' which also features saxophonist Oliver Sain and several singers, would be that it leaves you wanting to hear even more of Johnson's spellbinding piano playing. But then you could say the same thing about a lot of the records Johnson has played on, including such Chuck Berry hits as ''Maybellene,'' ''Roll Over Beethoven'' and ''Little Queenie.''

In fact, Johnnie Johnson not only plays on ''Johnny B. Goode,'' he is Johnny B. Goode. Berry has said that he wrote the song for Johnnie Johnson, although he mixed in some of his own biography and aspirations. Those records became famous while Johnson remained obscure and, for long periods, close to broke. Recently, as he was preparing to leave for February dates in Europe and New York, Johnson relaxed in his small North Side apartment and talked about his life and music, his struggles to stay in the music business and the success that seems finally to have come his way in the past couple of years.

Johnson agreed that the catalyst was undoubtedly the 1987 movie ''Chuck Berry: Hail Hail Rock 'n' Roll,'' much of it filmed at a 60th birthday concert at the Fox Theatre that featured Berry, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Robert Cray, Linda Ronstadt, Etta James - and Johnnie Johnson. The next year, he was named best keyboardist in a critics poll of Rolling Stone magazine.

''That helped a lot,'' Johnson said. ''I'm finally going out on my own, under my own name.''

Actually, Johnson has been billed as a leader before, perhaps most notably in the early 1950s, when he was working with a saxophone player and a drummer in a jazz group called the Sir John Trio.

''We were working at the Cosmo Club over there in East St. Louis,'' Johnson recalled, ''and one night the saxophone player took sick.'' Shortly before that, Johnson had dropped into a nearby club, Huff's Garden, and been impressed by a young guitar player who sat in.

''So I called Chuck Berry,'' Johnson said. ''And he said, 'What's the matter, you couldn't get nobody else?' '' Johnson laughed. ''I guess he didn't think he was up to power to play in a club with a jazz group.

''But he came on, and the people ate him up, his guitar and the things he did, singing and his pantomimes.''

Within a year or so, Berry had become the main attraction of the group, doing his versions of songs by two of his favorite singers, Muddy Waters and Nat ''King'' Cole. In 1955, Berry, Johnson and drummer Ebby Hardy went up to Chicago to record for Chess, the label of Waters, Howlin' Wolf and other blues greats. The main song for their first recording date, Berry and Johnson figured, was to be a mellow Kansas City-style blues called ''Wee Wee Hours.''

Johnson recalled, ''Chuck had been fooling around with this hillbilly song, 'Ida Red,' but he put his own words to it. We figured that would just go on the other side of 'Wee Wee Hours,' but we didn't have a title for it. Then Leonard Chess, one of the owners, saw this mascara box and he took the name off of it.''

The name of the song, of course, was ''Maybellene,'' and it was the first of many Berry hits for Chess in the early days of rock 'n' roll. (As blues fans know, ''Wee Wee Hours'' proves that Berry could hold his own with the best in that genre, although he was not to get many chances to record the blues over the years.)

''After a while,'' Johnson said, ''Chuck was doing all the work, so we changed the name to the Chuck Berry Trio. It wasn't like he was trying to steal the group or anything. It was fine with me. I knew that he was the one could get us the farthest, with that shuffle rock 'n' roll style of his.''

Pretty soon, Berry was playing all over the country. At first, he and Johnson would drive to the engagement and work with a house band. ''Then he started going all over, to Europe and places, and in those days I wasn't too cool on flying. So I would play only on gigs within a 300-mile radius or so, Kansas City, Chicago, like that.''

In his autobiography, Berry wrote of the early days, ''Johnnie Johnson was reserved and jolly . . . and we didn't have any clash on stage when I would express myself and perform in excess of his own performance. In the beginning, when I would get applause for a gesture, I would look back at Johnnie and see him smiling in approval of what I'd spontaneously added to the song or the show.''

Now, almost 3 1/2 decades later, Johnnie Johnson remains soft-spoken and seems to have a generally ea sy-going demeanor. However, there is clearly a strong will and a deep commitment to music underneath his casual exterior.

''If you haven't got your heart set on music, if you are not willing to sacrifice, you might as well give up and go on and get you a job in a steel foundry,'' he said. ''Like I did,'' he added, grinning. ''Only you better hang on to it.''

When he wasn't working with Berry, Johnson explained, he played with other area musicians, including Albert King. ''That was before Albert was famous,'' Johnson recalled. ''And then for a while I would fill in with other groups. But I wasn't making enough money, and in those days I had a wife and three kids.''

''So,'' Johnson said, ''I went to work for American Steel. But, liking music as much as I did, when Chuck called one day and said, 'Listen, I want you to go on this tour with me,' well, bang, I was gone, and when I came back I had a pink slip waiting for me.''

You know,'' he said, ''when I was 5 or 6 years old, growing up in West Virginia, my mother bought a piano and I started playing. I figured it was a gift of God, and I'd better not give it up.''

Over the years, Johnson has worked at other jobs. For a long time, he drove a bus for handicapped and elderly people. But music kept calling him back. Fortunately, successive generations keep rediscovering the blues, and these days the audiences are not just in America. Johnson has made several trips to Europe in the past couple of years, both with bandleader-saxophonist Oliver Sain and on his own.

''You'd be surprised how many bands over there are playing nothing but the blues,'' he said. ''I was at a festival in Nice, France, and there were 30 bands, all of them playing the blues.''

''They bring musicians from here, but they got their own bands, too,'' he said. Are they any good? He smiled. ''Well, yeah, they're getting into it, because they play it so much.''

Recently, Johnson found out his record was selling pretty well in Japan. ''Maybe this is my time,'' he said. ''I've been out there all these years, hit and run, hit and run, doing this, doing that, paying my dues. Now I hope to reap some of what I have sowed.''

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