StandDown Texas Project (Free subscription) | 07/24/2008
Austin criminal defense attorney Jodi Callaway-Cole, who represented Lonnie Johnson, has issued the following statement: Representing Lonnie on his subsequent federal habeas' for his death penalty case was an emotionally and professionally taxing endeavor. I have been kept up many...
StandDown Texas Project (Free subscription) | 07/24/2008
In about 30 minutes Carrie Christensen will be holding a news conference at the Magnolia Hotel in Houston to discuss the case of Lonnie Johnson, who was executed by Texas one year ago today. She has started the LEJ Foundation...
Billboard (Free subscription) | 07/21/2008
B.B. King returns to his blues roots with the help of producer T Bone Burnett on "One Kind Favor," due Aug. 26 via Geffen.
Keep The Coffee Coming (Free subscription) | 07/07/2008
This is a song with a couple of titles. Times Are Getting Hard, Boys is the other. It was recorded in the 50's with a few variations by Pete Seeger and Lonnie Johnson. This version appears on their 1960 album The Limeliters. MP3 File
Rock and Roll Daily (Free subscription) | 07/03/2008
When producer T Bone Burnett first met with B.B. King, he presented the blues legend with a simple mission statement: “I’d like for you to go back to the Fifties and do some of the stuff as you did it then.” At 82, King wondered whether he could really re-create what he calls “the B.B. [...]
Honey, Where You Been So Long? (Free subscription) | 06/18/2008
I updated the release dates for the first blues mix below - I knew someone would call me out for not including it - yet here we are. Does anyone know if Yazoo Records is still releasing albums? Their website doesn’t seem like it has been updated since the last batch of Patton reissues, but [...]
Denver Post (Free subscription) | 06/04/2008
The jet skis were the first to fade, a noxious noise suddenly notable by its absence.
BLUES TOWN (The City Of Blues) (Free subscription) | 04/21/2008
kansascity.com (Free subscription) | 04/01/2008
"I've been dead four or five times. But I always came back. This time, I knew that some day, somehow, somebody would find me."
PopMatters Music (Free subscription) | 04/01/2008
Lonnie Johnson is coming back once again. "Who's that?" a casual blues fan might ask. "You mean Robert Johnson?" Nope. I mean Lonnie Johnson. Robert Johnson is the iconic blues man who died in 1938...
RightWingBob.com (Free subscription) | 03/30/2008
It’s always a good day to hear Forever Young. The show Bob Dylan and his band did in Cardiff, Wales, during the year 2000 is famous amongst collectors, and the performance of Forever Young from that show is currently on YouTube. I think that watching and listening to this, you get an angle on Bob putting [...]
Rifftides (Free subscription) | 03/28/2008
It was a lucky break that The Philadelphia Inquirer's Dan DeLuca did a column about a new CD in tribute to the pioneering guitarist Lonnie Johnson. Here is some of the piece: "I honestly do not think there was anyone...
Philadelphia Inquirer (Free subscription) | 03/27/2008
"I've been dead four or five times. But I always came back. This time, I knew that some day, somehow, somebody would find me." - Lonnie Johnson, in 1960
Honey, Where You Been So Long? (Free subscription) | 03/11/2008
Truth be told I’m currently obsessed with Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak and the Ohio Player’s Fire - but I’ll refrain from posting selections from those albums today. There’s been a couple of requests for the Lonnie Johnson songs I’ve mentioned recently - so here is a trio of sides from easily the most versatile bluesman around. [...]
Havering On (Free subscription) | 02/26/2008
Lonnie Johnson a native a New Orleans, who first recorded in 1925, was a guitar legend long before we knew what they were. He was a man with Hot Fingers, which was also the title of one of his great recordings. This was no country boy, found on a scouting trip by some record company employee, but a man who oozed urban sophistication. Lonnie Johnson first recorded as a member of Charles Creath’s Jazz...
