Vaudeville blues singer, who recorded for OKeh and Victor 1923-1927. "Johnson's early recordings were with Clarence Williams groups, and she may have been one of his protégées. Appearances on the vaudeville circuit are logged from 1922 to 1932, but nothing is known of her subsequent life." (The Penguin guide to blues recordings (2006), p. 325)
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Margaret Johnson was a blues and early jazz vocalist and pianist. Johnson's primary era of recording activity as a vocalist was from 1923 to 1927. Prior to this, she had worked in vaudeville. She is best known for her recording of the song, "Dead Drunk Blues". Her main output was released on the Okeh and Victor labels.
She recorded with the harmonica player Bobby Leecan and guitarist Robert Cooksey, playing country blues; she also did several recordings with New Orleans jazz ensembles which included Sidney Bechet, Clarence Williams, Louis Armstrong, Bubber Miley, and Tom Morris. In 1924, she recorded "Absent Minded Blues", which was written by Tom Delaney, and another of his compositions, "Nobody Knows the Way I Feel This Mornin'". She was accompanied by Williams on these recordings. She and Clarence Williams also played with the Jazz Rippers, Buddy Christian's ensemble, although Williams was not credited and Johnson was listed under the name Margaret Carter. Her songs were often humorous and sexually suggestive in tone. In September 1927, she released one of her final recordings, "Second-Handed Blues" / "Good Woman Blues", on Victor Records. After the late 1920s she ceased to record as a vocalist. Most of Johnson's 1920s sides were reissued on CD by Document Records.
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By Eugene Chadbourne
Although lumped together with many female classic blues singers from the '20s, Margaret Johnson's career was a bit more diverse, including her recording output. She was one of the few female vocalists of her era that made records with a strong country blues influence, particularly the collaborations involving the harmonica-and-guitar team of Bobby Leecan and Robert Cooksey. Of course, she also took part in sessions typical of this era, which combined blues singing with extremely strong New Orleans jazz combos, cutting tracks with masterful players such as Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, and Clarence Williams. Both she and pianist/composer Williams secretly took part in sessions by banjoist Buddy Christian's band the Jazz Rippers, Williams taking no credit at all, and Johnson hiding out under the pseudonym of Margaret Carter.
Many of the blues numbers originating from this period indulged in cleverness for its own sake, sometimes with more than a dash of smut; but there is no denying the potential philosophical impact of Johnson's better recordings, titles often overlooked as consumers flock to the tried-and-true "Dead Drunk Blues." Some of her other recordings include "Who'll Chop Your Suey (When I'm Gone)" (from the same genre of song that contains the classic country number "Who'll Take the Garbage Out When I'm Gone?"), "Folks in New York City Ain't Like Folks Down South" (a cousin to the Buck Owens number "I Wouldn't Live in New York City If They Gave Me the Whole Damn Town"), and "When a 'Gator Holler, Folks Say It's a Sign of Rain" (a song unique enough to inhabit a class of its own).
The Document label holds a pretty full deck when it comes to her '20s recordings, offering a set of her complete works as well as a separate collection of the material with Leecan and Cooksey, released under their name. As is true of much of the classic blues material from the '20s and '30s, Johnson's recordings have also been folded into more than a dozen compilations originating in almost as many different countries. Another difference between Johnson and the colleagues featured on these recordings was that she didn't drop off the music scene once the public taste for classic blues momentarily dwindled.