FAIRMONT – Go, Johnnie, go.
Johnnie Johnson, the boogie-woogie piano player and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member from Fairmont, once told an understated story about his musical collaborations with the new guy in his band.
“Well, Chuck would come in with the lyrics,” he recounted to The Dominion Post, “and I’d come up with something on the piano. It seemed to work out OK.”
Indeed.
“Chuck,” was Chuck Berry.
And one set of lyrics, put to paper and then filtered through 88 piano keys and six strings of an electric guitar, ended up as what many regard as the signature tune of rock ‘n’ roll – no matter the generation or trend.
“Johnny B. Goode,” was the song.
Berry, according to popular lore, penned it in tribute to Johnson, a quiet guy who grew up on Pennsylvania Avenue in this Marion County city. Johnson was 80 when he died in 2005.
Like a lot of Black people of his generation in Appalachia, Johnson had to venture from the hills for steady wages.
He ended up in a factory job in Detroit at the height of World War II, where he grooved on John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker and other blues performers who played the jumping clubs that lined Hastings Street downtown.
Later, after he was drafted and served his hitch in the South Pacific, it was back to the Midwest.
He settled in St. Louis for more factory work and weekend gigs with his jazz and blues combo.
Music kept him busy. He had lined up a plum New Year’s Eve gig in 1952 when his saxophone player suddenly fell ill.
Johnson scrambled and called a lanky, fast-talking guitar player whom he casually knew: Chuck Berry.
You know how it turned out.
That combo with the new frontman brought in 1953 just like a-ringing a bell. Two years later, they were in a studio at Chess Records in Chicago, making rock ‘n’ roll history.
ANY OLD WAY YOU CHOOSE IT
On Saturday, Johnson’s musical history with his hometown continues with the “Johnnie Johnson Jam,” which gets going at 6 p.m. in Palatine Park.
For more than 20 years, this particular night at the park has been a blues summit for a genre that has never really strayed from the bars and festivals where people still get up and dance.
A lot of the top blues cats have prowled Palatine’s stage on its blues evening, along with Johnson himself, who was the headliner for four years after he got himself rock ‘n’ roll-reacquainted with the city of his birth.
The park, a leafy expanse that bumps the banks of the Monongahela River, has morphed into a genuine live music venue, in fact, with shows by artists and tribute bands of every sonic stripe – and Johnson was a big reason why.
He was the original draw, said Kris Cinalli, Marion’s County administer-turned-chief concert promoter for Palatine, which operates under the county umbrella with additional support from corporate sponsors.
Visit the park’s Facebook page for its complete lineup of concerts and other events.
In the meantime, there’s the latest incarnation of Johnnie’s event on Saturday, honoring the quiet pioneer.
“Johnnie’s festival is one of our favorite events,” as Cinalli has long said.
“We always try to mix it up with this one,” he said previously. “Of course, we get the blues bands, but we want the jazz artists, too. Johnnie was a jazz musician, just as much as he did blues and rock ‘n’ roll.”
Aristotle Jones, the “Appalachian Soul Man” will open the evening with his own jukebox take on Johnnie’s top tunes.
Johnson’s rollicking, boogie-woogie style wasn’t just a foundation, Jones said. It was a revelation.
“Johnnie was the ‘roll’ in rock and roll,” he said.
He’ll be followed by The PennSOULvanians, a seven-piece ensemble from central Pa., playing a ranging set of original music, from rock to R&B to reggae to hip-hop.
West Virginia’s own HVH: The Heavy Hitters, will follow with a set of funk-drenched tunes.
Palatine favorites Everyday, Everybody, from Washington, D.C., will close the evening with a stirring of funk, jazz and soul.
In his later years, Johnson didn’t always talk about his days with Berry, preferring to focus instead on his own stardom on the blues circuit.
That came after his performances with Keith Richards and Eric Clapton in “Hail, Hail Rock and Roll,” a 1986 film centered around Richards’ efforts to put a concert together for Berry’s 60th birthday. At the time, Johnson was out of music and driving a bus part-time for a senior center in St. Louis.
All of a sudden, that unassuming guy from Fairmont was the top name on the marquee at the blues club or festival – be it in West Virginia or Western Australia.
YOU NEVER CAN TELL …
Of course, there are all those tunes Johnnie steered and drove – a catalogue that came to be known simply as, “Chuck Berry music.”
That was in full evidence at an after-hours session following the 2006 blues gathering in Palatine Park, which was the first after Johnson’s death.
Daryl Davis, a musician and writer from Washington, D.C., who mastered Johnson’s piano style, was playing with the festival’s house band in a supper club on Merchant Street just up from the main stage – when it happened.
A bridal party crashed the session.
The gowned-and-tuxedoed contingent was drunk and happy, as it yelled hair-metal requests for Warrant, Poison and the like.
Davis grinned and said, “You know what? This one might be more appropriate.”
Then, he counted off “You Never Can Tell,” Berry and Johnson’s Creole-tinged gem about the teenage wedding and the old folks wishing the young people well.
Said party was converted.
“Whoo!” the best man (amazingly) bellowed. “Chuck Berry!”
Yep.
And Johnnie Johnson, too.
