Collectables
2005
The Very Best Of Lonnie Johnson
About This Album
With an elegant guitar style that helped bridge country blues and the more modern urban R&B sound while at the same time keeping a dialogue going between jazz and the blues, Lonnie Johnson was one of the most important guitarists of his generation. He recorded hundreds of sides for OKeh, Decca, and Bluebird between 1925 and 1945, and participated in scores more as a session man for the likes of Duke Ellington and others. By the mid-'40s he had switched from acoustic to electric guitar and had signed with Cincinnati's King Records, recording several successful ballads for the label between 1947 and 1950, the period covered by this anthology. He never completely abandoned the blues, however, and while some of his King ballads are included here (like his big 1948 R&B hit "Tomorrow Night"), a good portion of these tracks are country blues standards posing in uptown clothes. Prime examples include the solo "Backwater Blues" and the Appalachian blues classic "Little Rockin' Chair," both of which have long lineages, and his cover of the Delmore Brothers' "Trouble Ain't Nothin' But the Blues," which doesn't have a long history as a song, but in Johnson's hands it sounds like it could have.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17 and 18)

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