If you have enjoyed listening to the album in your CD players or on your computer,wait until you hear Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson on vinyl!  With such a rich warm sound, it is the perfect addition to any record collection...in stores and available online starting October 10th, 2008.  The cover is now posted as our profile pic.  Stay tuned!

Here are just a few comments from members of the media...

"The blues isn't just a style; it's a sociopolitical metaphor, the music of abiding reinvention.  Lonnie Johnson, credited with the first guitar solo on record, embodied that spirit—he could play, sing, hang with Armstrong and Ellington, and blur the lines between blues and jazz.  In the early '60s he made a comeback after turning up in Philly, where he'd worked at the Ben Franklin Hotel.  The tribute CD Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson attempts yet again to rescue this giant from the historical shadows.  Blues Anatomy celebrates the release with guitarist Jef Lee Johnson, who, like Lonnie, weaves blues and jazz into something defying categorization."

-David R.Adler (Philadelphia Weekly – Philadelphia, PA)

"Lonnie Johnson was simply one of the most important guitarists of his generation.  Even so, he is hardly a household name these days, even for contemporary guitarists whose very musical path was plowed by Johnson as far back as the 1920s. It's that relative obscurity that Philadelphia-based producer Aaron Luis Levinson sought to address with this tribute to Johnson's life and career."

-Steve Leggett (AllMusic.com)

"Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson, which will be released Tuesday, is a CD for roots-music aficionados, but the music doesn't leave the casual listener in the cold. In fact, with each song, the said listener gains appreciation for musical innovation that served as the foundation of today's rock music."

-Scott Iwasaki (Deseret Morning News – Salt Lake City, UT)

"Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson is a good cross-section of Lonnie's accomplishments, giving you the pleasure of hearing at least a sampling of most of his dossier."

-Lou Novacheck (Blogcritics Magazine)

"Blues Anatomy is a surprisingly convincing blues and early jazz revival group from Philadelphia. But it's Jef Lee Johnson's rough-hewn eclectic guitar playing here that puts it in the "special" category."

-Jeff Simon (The Buffalo News – Buffalo, NY)

"Running though 12 [Lonnie] Johnson classics, Jef Lee Johnson (no relation) leads an all-star blues cast that not only pays tribute to the original, but highlights why the blues still have a place among today's musical mish-mash."

-Glenn Burnsilver (Daily Reporter-Herald – Loveland, CO)

"Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson conjures up the loose 'n' funky vintage sound with a special guest vocal by Geoff Muldaur ("He's a Jelly Roll Baker") and some great guitar-playing by Jef Lee Johnson."

-Greg Haymes (Times Union – Albany, NY)

"Grammy winning producer Aaron Levinson deserves a medal for pulling off one of the most difficult feats in music: producing a tribute album that doesn't suck."

-David "Jaimoe" Ball (Jambands.ca)

"Though one of the most influential blues guitarists ever to live (he was the first person to record a single note guitar solo), the late Lonnie Johnson wasn't widely known outside the jazz blues circles.  This enjoyable effort by Blues Anatomy and noted guitarist Jef Lee Johnson (no relation) is an attempt to remedy that."

-Jeffrey Sisk (The Daily News – McKeesport, PA)

"On this modest tribute CD, veteran Philadelphia guitarist Jef Lee Johnson (Ronald Shannon Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Common, etc.), whose own work in the funk, jazz and rock idioms deserves much more attention, adds all the soul, swing and musical invention that tunes as different as "St. Louis Blues," "Broken Levee Blues" and the downright dreamy "Tomorrow Night" require.  Blues Anatomy singer Eddie Davis, who handles most of the vocals, is also sensitive to Lonnie Johnson's legacy; his strong performances on both ballads and up-tempo tunes eschew the clichéd histrionics that mar many contemporary blues recordings."

-Tom Laskin (The Daily Page – Madison, WI)

"The gritty, evocative vocals of Eddie Davis and often spectacular guitar assistance from Jef Lee Johnson and Joe Mass are among the prime attributes of Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson (Range), a session featuring fresh approaches to vintage blues and jazz cuts, many of them like "He's A Jelly Roll Baker," "6/88 Glide," "Swing Out Rhythm" and "Bull Frog Man" either written or co-written by Johnson…This is excellent repertory fare, sung and played with energy and conviction."

-Ron Wynn (The City Paper – Nashville, TN)

"…Range Records gathered up some of the best blues players whose roots — like Lonnie's — are in Philadelphia and whipped up a tribute album. Blues Anatomy with lead guitarist Jef Lee Johnson, a reclusive legend amongst his peers, play these songs with respect and love so true that one could swear that this was just an old collection remastered for compact disc."

-Jen Cray (INK19)

"Right from the outset, with the woozy call of horns that greets the gently rolling lilt of St. Louis Blues, Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson establishes a mood that is drawn straight from yesteryear. Moving from the racing, acoustic gem Swing Out Rhythm to the brassy, New Orleans-bred headiness of I'm Not Rough, it's suitably diverse, too, which is, by itself, a reflection upon Johnson's wide-ranging interests. Jef Lee Johnson's guitar solos sing beautifully within the set's antiquated arrangements, and for a moment, Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson finds a nearly perfect groove, one that pays homage to a long forgotten figure without succumbing to the drudgery that reverence typically brings. Blues Anatomy clearly is having fun, and its loose, free-spirited joy is what ultimately sells the material."

-John Metzger (The Music Box)

"Aaron Luis Levinson has brought together a number of musicians including the Philadelphia band, Blues Anatomy, along with special guest, guitarist Jef Lee Johnson, for a tribute to him, "Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson" an affectionate, spirited tribute that hopefully will lead many to discover for themselves this legendary blues and jazz guitarist."

-Ron Weinstock (Jazz & Blues)

"This tribute serves its master well and brings attention to one of the overlooked blues/jazzmen of the 20^th Century...The album's diversity mirrors that of Lonnie Johnson's own career, bouncing from ragtime to blues to smooth r&b."

-Mitch Myers (Downbeat Magazine)

"The renowned Philly-based group Blues Anatomy [with] Jef Lee Johnson and special guest Geoff Muldaur re-casts 11 of Lonnie Johnson's most distinguished tracks...and updates them for 2008 with a blues-rock edge."

-T.J.M. (Dirty Linen)

"The New Orleans-born singing guitarist's massive contributions to American music had been largely forgotten by the time Philadelphia disc jockey Chris Albertson found him in 1959 working as a janitor at a local hotel. Albertson set him on a comeback trail that kept him busy performing and recording until his death in 1970. But now, some 38 years later, Johnson's name is again little known, even to many serious blues and jazz fans..This is a situation Philadelphia producer Aaron Luis Levinson hopes to rectify with Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson."

-Lee Hildebrand (Living Blues Magazine)

If you missed the live radio feature on 91FM WHYY, you can listen to the hour-long broadcast on the life of Lonnie Johnson featuring interviews by Aaron Levinson and famed music critic/historian Francis Davis here. *NOTE: It will take a few minutes for the entire program to load in your browser*

In addition, producer Aaron Levinson was interviewed on 88.5FM WXPN in Philadelphia.  The radio feature is now online as a podcast via PRX's "Blues File".

Saluting Lonnie Johnson, Original Guitar Hero

By Joel Rose 

All Things Considered, March 28, 2008 - The guitar solo holds a cherished place in American culture. There’s even a popular video game that allows non-musicians to "play" along with their idols.

But the man credited with playing some of the first recorded guitar solos has largely been forgotten. Lonnie Johnson was one of the few musicians to successfully straddle the worlds of blues, jazz and pop.

Now, nearly 40 years after his death, a new tribute album is trying to restore Johnson’s place as the original guitar hero. Called Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson, the name applies as much to the people playing the music as it does to the listeners.

Jef Lee Johnson, a guitar hero in his own right, has backed up the likes of Aretha Franklin and McCoy Tyner. He isn’t related to Lonnie Johnson — in fact, until he was invited to play on the tribute album, he had never really listened to Lonnie Johnson.

"He was insane," Jef Lee Johnson says. "And I mean that in a good way. ... Every track, every take, he’s trying to play, like, everything that he can. And he can play everything. It was almost avant-garde, as much stuff as he was playing."

A Life in Music

It’s not surprising that even a pro like Jef Lee Johnson was caught off guard. Lonnie Johnson was a private man. In 1967, he explained to Moe Asch of Folkways Records why no one ever wrote his biography.

"Some have started," Johnson said. "They quit for some reason, I don’t know. My life hasn’t been that bad that I shouldn’t tell it. But some parts of a man’s life, he keeps it for himself. He don’t tell it to the public. "

Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was born in New Orleans just before the turn of the 20th century. He got his start playing violin with his father.

"I just bought an instrument, and in six months I was holding a good job," Johnson said. "I was playing with my father’s band — he had a string band."

Johnson’s father and nine other members of his family died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. So Johnson headed north. He played on riverboats and wound up in St. Louis.

By that time, he was playing guitar. In 1925, he entered a blues contest. He won, and landed a deal with Okeh Records.

Soon, Johnson was soloing on records by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. These recordings built his reputation as the first jazz guitarist to base his style on single-note melodies, like a horn player — a decade before Charlie Christian or Django Reinhardt. It’s an approach he perfected on his duo recordings with white guitarist Eddie Lang, who worked with Johnson under a pseudonym at a time when the music industry was segregated.

Lonnie Johnson’s first recording contract ran out in the early 1930s, and he spent much of the Great Depression working other jobs to pay the bills.

"I went back to the steel mill, and start working again," he said. "Cause I didn’t know the nightclub work, and I didn’t take any chance. So went back to the steel mill in East St. Louis, and working five years. Started as a sander, and end up as a molder. Molding big box car wheels, that’s what I was molding."

At the end of the 30s, Johnson went back into the recording studio — first as a blues singer, and later as a ballad singer. At the end of the 1940s, he actually scored a pop hit called "Tomorrow Night."

Rediscovery

A decade later, Lonnie Johnson was all but forgotten. But in 1959, a jazz radio DJ in Philadelphia played a Lonnie Johnson cut, and then mused on what had happened to the guitarist.

"And then I got a call from somebody at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, someone who worked there," says Chris Albertson, now a music journalist in New York. "Who said, I work with somebody named Lonnie Johnson. He’s a janitor, he never talks about music. But he’s very careful with his hands. So maybe he is the Lonnie Johnson!"

Albertson had Johnson on his show many times in the early ’60s, and helped engineer his comeback on the folk revival scene in New York. Albertson also produced a handful of Lonnie Johnson records.

Johnson was able to quit his job as a janitor at the hotel, and toured extensively. But he kept his home in Philadelphia, where he’d met Susie Smalls a few years earlier.

Smalls still lives in the North Philadelphia row house she bought with Lonnie Johnson in 1960, and where she raised their daughter.

"He was just plain," Smalls says. "He never did brag. At all. He just kept his guitar, played his guitar."

Johnson’s self-deprecating humor and modesty are part of the reason he’s not more famous, says Aaron Levinson, who produced the new tribute CD.

"People tend to minimize the contribution of folks that don’t have roman candles associated with his life," Levinson says. "He had the roman candles, but they were all coming out of his guitar."

If Johnson was bitter about the ups and downs of his career, he never let on.

"These 68 years has been beautiful, hard," Johnson said. "I can go to sleep, and sleep at night. I won’t have to worry about I told someone the wrong direction to go, rather than the right direction. It don’t hurt to do a favor."

Johnson spent his last years in Toronto, where he died in 1970. Nearly four decades after his death, his guitar solos sound as crazy as ever.

Last night was indeed a special evening.  Anytime you need to get a bunch of musicians to agree on something (anything really) you have your work cut out for you.  But in this case everything fell into place.  I am of course talking about Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson at the World Cafe Live.  Some shows are great and they live on in your memory not simply because of the music but also because of the sincerity and good feelings that surround the music and that comes from only one place, the audience.  I have played many shows in my life and I can tell you that when the audience is "giving back" it elevates the experience to another level, one that is unavailable otherwise.  Having the wife and daughter of Lonnie Johnson and their extended family with us last night brought the concert into the realm of the legendary.  Lonnie himself has been gone for 38 years but the love and memories that people have for and about him are very much alive.  The Blues Anatomy crew, Real Live Horns, Joe Mass and Jef Lee Johnson invested this performance with a depth of feeling that cannot be purchased for any price.  Folks came down from New York City to attend this performance and when people are willing to travel 111 miles for an hour of music you know you are doing something right.  I saw many familiar faces and some that I have never seen before but I’m not sure I have ever seen so many of them smiling, some smiling even through their tears.  I am quite sure that there was one proud spirit who was also beaming, knowing that at least in Philadelphia, in the hearts and minds of those who loved him, he was never going to be forgotten.  Thank you Mr. Johnson, thank you for the music.

-Aaron Levinson (Producer of Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson)
03/28/2008

Lonnie Johnson’s Shades of Blues

No. 22 on Living Blues chart this week!

As the Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson album release date draws near (3/25/08), the record has been playing all over the country (and world) on the radio.  If you reside in any of the following areas, contact your local station to request a song or two from the album:

CHMR (St. John’s, NL, Canada)
CJMQ (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
CKX (Brandon, MB, Canada)
KALA (Davenport, IA & Moline, IL)
KAWW (Searcy, AR)
KAXE (Grand Rapids, MN)
KBAC (Santa Fe, NM)
KBDN (Coos Bay, OR)
KBSO (Corpus Christi, TX)
KBZB (Las Vegas/Pioche, NV)
KCMQ (Columbia, MO)
KCUB (West Central, TX)
KCUV (Denver, CO)
KDHX (St. Louis, MO)
KDNK (Carbondale, CO)
KECH (Sun Valley/Ketchum, ID)
KEEP (Bandera, TX)
KEYJ (Abilene, TN)
KFAN (Fredricksburg, TX & San Antonio, TX)
KFAT (Minneapolis, MN)
KFMC (Fairmont/Mankato, MN)
KFTM (Ft. Morgan, CO)
KGUM (Agana, Guam)
KHBL (Hannibal, MO)
KHID (Harlingen, TX)
KINK (Portland, OR)
KIQX (Durango, CO)
KIXR (Ponca City, OK)
KKID (Rolla/Salem, MO)
KLKC (Parsons, KS)
KLLZ (Bemidji, MN)
KLOO (Portland/Eugene, OR)
KLPZ (Parker/Lake Havasu, AZ)
KMET (Riverside/S. Bernadino, CA)
KMGN (Phoenix/Flagstaff, AZ)
KMHA (New Town, ND)
KMMS (Bozeman, MT)
KMMT (Mammoth Lakes, CA)
KMTN (Jackson, WY)
KNIM (Maryville, MO)
KNRG (Columbus, TX)
KOHO (Wenatchee, WA)
KOZY (Grand Rapids, MN)
KPND (Sand Point, ID)
KPND (Spokane, WA & Sand Point, ID)
KRSH (Santa Rosa, CA)
KRSI (Saipan, Mariana Islands)
KRVM (Eugene, OR)
KRVN (Eugene, OR)
KRWB (Roseau, MN)
KRXL (Kirsksville, MO)
KSBV (Salida, CO)
KSEK (Joplin, MO)
KSIL (Silver City, NM)
KTEP (El Paso, TX)
KUNM (Albuquerque, NM)
KUSH (Cushing, OK)
KVLE (Crested Butte/Monarch, CO)
KVNF (Paonia, CO)
KWDQ (Woodward, OK)
KXCI (Tucson, AZ)
KXFM (Santa Maria, CA)
KYBB (Sioux Falls, SD)
KYSL (Frisco, CO)
KZIQ (Ridgecrest, CA)
KZMT (Helena, MT)
KZPR (Minot, ND)
KZRC (Houston/Bay City, TX)
KZRO (Redding, CA)
Music Café Radio (Dalhart/North Texas)
Pennspeakradio.com (Worldwide)
PT Radio 1ZZ (New Zealand)
Radiofreephoenix.com (Worldwide)
Rootsmusicreport.com (Worldwide)
Studio One (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia)
WALW (Huntsville, AL)
WBFO (Buffalo, NY)
WBOR (Brunswick, ME)
WBSD (Burlington, WI)
WCNI (New London, CT)
WCPI (Mc Minnville, TN)
WDBN (Dublin, GA)
WEBK (Rutland, VT)
WERU (E. Orland, ME)
WESP (Dothan, AL)
WFHB (Bloomington, IN)
WFIV (Knoxville, TN)
WFOS (Norfolk, VA)
WFPK (Louisville, KY)
WGMC (Rochester, NY)
WHAY (Whitley City, KY)
WHRV (Norfolk, VA)
WHRW (Binghampton, NY)
WITR (Rochester, NY)
WIUJ (St. Thomas, Virgin Islands)
WJDF (Orange/Central, MA)
WKNZ (Hattiesburg, MS)
WKSO (Natchez, MS)
WKSX (Augusta, GA)
WKTX (Youngstown, OH)
WKZE (Sharon, CT & Redhook, NY)
WLVO (Live Oak, FL)
WMEQ (Eau Claire, WI)
WMNG (St. Croix, Virgin Islands)
WMSE (Milwaukee, WI)
WMWV (Conway, NH)
WNCW (Spindale, NC)
WOAB (Dothan, AL)
WPAM (Pottsville, PA)
WQNR (Auburn, AL)
WQSS (Augusta (Central), ME)
WROX (Clarksdale, MS)
WRRW (Virginia Beach, Va)
WSYC (Shippensburg, PA)
WSYY (Bangor, ME)
WUTL (Tallahassee, FL)
WWEC (Lancaster, PA)
WWHP (Champaign, IL)
WWLL (Sebring, FL)
WWSP (Stevens Point, WI)
WWYO (Bluefield/Pineville, WV)
WXMZ (Hartford, KY)
WXRD (Chicago, IL/N.W. Indiana)
WYCE (Grand Rapids, MI)
WYSO (Dayton, OH)
WZEW (Mobile, AL)

Look for Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson in the blues section of your favorite local music store beginning 3/25/08.  (Everywhere CDs are sold)