Label: Document Records.
Release Date: January 1, 1991.
Recording Time: 69 minutes.
Recording Date: May 15, 1929 - January 23, 1930.
Release Info: Compilation (DOCD-5067) Studio Recording.
Styles: Acoustic Blues, Country Blues, Piedmont Blues, Pre-War Country Blues, Regional Blues, Pre-War Blues.
Lonnie Johnson straddled the boundaries between blues and jazz during the 1927-1930 period before deciding to stick to the former. This 22-song collection features five guitar duets with Eddie Lang (including "Bull Frog Moan" and "Hot Fingers"), vocal duets with Spencer Williams (including "It Feels So Good Parts 3 and 4" and "Once or Twice"), Victoria Spivey (the two-part "You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now") and Clarence Williams ("Wipe It Off"), and such blues numbers as "From Now on Make Your Whoopee at Home," "She's Making Whoopee in Hell Tonight," and "Another Woman Booked Out and Bound to Go." Lonnie Johnson at his best. ~ Scott Yanow
Abridged from this album's original booklet notes.
Through 1929, Lonnie Johnson continued to explore three musical fields on record. With Eddie Lang, he pushed at the frontiers of jazz guitar with the tone poem Bull Frog Moan, displays of technique such as Hot Fingers and the yearning, pop-structured Blue Room (not related to the Rodgers & Hart song). At the same time, he was cranking out third and fourth parts to It Feels So Good with Spencer Williams, and in a more adult, but still hokum-based vein, duetting with Victoria Spivey on a composition that much later became a favourite of B. B. King's. In June, he also made a six title session of blues. It's dangerous to read autobiography into blues lyrics too readily, especially with so facile a writer as Lonnie Johnson, but it's almost impossible to resist the suspicion that the tenor of most of the songs cut on 11 June 1929 denotes a marriage in trouble. Lonnie and Mary Johnson's marriage lasted until 1932, by which time they had had six children in seven years; but these songs, by turns deeply depressed, suspicious and angry, surely do not bespeak domestic contentment. The 1925 version of Falling Rain Blues had used rain as a metaphor for misery, and it's surprising that the new version is about floods; the remade Mr. Johnson's Blues is an extended lyric about the unhappiness of lost love, where in 1925 had it consisted of one verse, followed by an extended guitar solo. Of these sad songs, Sundown Blues is intriguing; it had been recorded the previous November by one Alec Johnson. In the notes to Document BDCD-6013, I speculated that Alec might have been the father of Memphis Minnie's brother-in-law; this version of Sundown Blues leads one to ask whether he was related to Lonnie, perhaps via Tommy Johnson's father, Idell, who was a connection of Lonnie's. Most likely, as Tommy's brothers don't seem to have recalled Alec Johnson, is that Lonnie just heard and liked the record, whose sentimental words are close to his own emotional aesthetic.
Early in October 1929, Johnson cut his last duets with Eddie Lang, who had joined Paul Whiteman that May; it was probably Lang's touring commitments for Whiteman, and his extensive freelance accompaniment work, that kept them from recording again before Lang's untimely death in 1933, from complications following a tonsillectomy. In the fall of 1929, Lonnie Johnson, too, was touring, working the Southern states with Bessie Smith's "Midnight Steppers" show, which, like all vaudeville acts, was finding it difficult to compete with the new talking pictures (and with radio, which still had few places for blacks, although "Lonnie Johnson, Recording Guitarist" had his own show on WPAP New York by 1929). Lonnie and Bessie had an affair during the tour, though by his own admission they "never got real serious".
By January, Johnson was back in New York. On 7th January, he cut two extraordinary songs, which are really two parts of a single blues. She's Making Whoopee In Hell Tonight is famous as the basis for King Solomon Hill's classic "Whoopee Blues". Along with Another Woman Booked Out and Bound To Go and the earlier From Now On Make Your Whoopee At Home, they form a trilogy dealing with obsessive jealousy, their inspiration apparently being the title of Gus Kahn & Walter Donaldson's innocuously "naughty" "Makin' Whoopee", a 20s hit for Eddie Cantor. The results are disturbingly intense, and one can see why they appealed to King Solomon Hill. It's almost a relief to hear Johnson's hokum numbers with Spencer and Clarence Williams and the "father of jazz piano", James P. Johnson, whose accomplished stride work inspires some exceptional guitar from Lonnie - particularly exceptional, given the songs it adorns.
On 23rd January 1930, Lonnie Johnson began a session with two songs that convey a remarkable atmosphere of alienated, trapped desperation. It's well known that Robert Johnson admired Lonnie, to the extent of claiming that his middle initial stood for Lonnie, rather than Leroy. No doubt Lonnie's guitar prowess accounts for much of Robert's enthusiasm, but I wonder if, on songs like Death Valley Is Just Half Way To My Home and Headed For Southland, he also recognised a kindred, haunted psyche. ~ Chris Smith, 1991 Document Records.
Credits: Blind Willie Dunn - guitar, performer, primary artist; James P. Johnson - composer, piano; Alec Johnson - composer; J.C. Johnson - piano; James Johnson - piano; Lonnie Johnson - composer, guitar, primary artist, violin, vocals; Hans Klement - remastering; Eddie Lang - composer, guest artist, guitar; Johnny Parth - compilation producer; Chris Smith - liner notes; Victoria Spivey - composer, guest artist, piano, primary artist, vocals; Big Joe Williams - composer; Clarence Williams - composer, primary artist, vocals, wood block; Spencer Williams - primary artist, scraper, vocals.
Tracklist:
1. Bull Frog Moan - Lonnie Johnson & Blind Willie Dunn;
2. It Feels So Good, Part 3 - Lonnie Johnson & Spencer Williams;
3. It Feels So Good, Part 4 - Lonnie Johnson & Spencer Williams;
4. You Can't Give A Woman Everything She Needs - Lonnie Johnson;
5. Sundown Blues - Lonnie Johnson;
6. From Now On Make Your Whoopee At Home - Lonnie Johnson;
7. Mr Johnson's Blues No. 2 - Lonnie Johnson;
8. Baby Please Don't Leave Home No More - Lonnie Johnson;
9. The New Fallin' Rain Blues - Lonnie Johnson;
10. You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now - Part 1 - Victoria Spivey & Lonnie Johnson;
11. You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now - Part 2 - Victoria Spivey & Lonnie Johnson;
12. Deep Minor Rhythm Stomp - Blind Willie Dunn & Lonnie Johnson;
13. Midnight Call (Blues) - Blind Willie Dunn & Lonnie Johnson;
14. Hot Fingers - Blind Willie Dunn & Lonnie Johnson;
15. Blue Room Blues - Blind Willie Dunn & Lonnie Johnson;
16. She's Making Whoopee In Hell Tonight - Lonnie Johnson;
17. Another Woman Booked Out And Bound To Go - Lonnie Johnson;
18. Once Or Twice - Lonnie Johnson & Spencer Williams;
19. Monkey And The Baboon - Lonnie Johnson & Spencer Williams;
20. Wipe It Off - Lonnie Johnson & Clarence Williams;
21. Death Valley Is Just Half Way To My Home - Lonnie Johnson;
22. Headed For Southland - Lonnie Johnson.