This is our January 2013 Blues Overdose Issue. It includes links to eight FREE Blues music tracks for you to download. More info below.

Terry Mullins has our feature interview with Chicago Blues legend Carlos Johnson. Mark Thompson and Tom Carter review the Sun Coast Blues Festival.

We have 6 music reviews for you! Marty Gunther reviews a new album by Dennis Gruenling. John Mitchell reviews a new release from Mitch Woods . We welcome a new reviewer this week, Rhys Williams. Rhys reviews a new release from Jake Lear and the Line Up. Rex Bartholomew reviews a new album from Melvin Taylor. James "Skyy Dobro" Walker reviews a new CD from James "Buddy" Rogers. Greg Szalony reviews a new album from Tommy Talton. We have the latest in Blues Society news from around the globe. All this and MORE! SCROLL DOWN!!!

 From The Editor's Desk

Hey Blues Fans,

It is the last issue of January and time for our Blues Overdose Issue. On the last Thursday of each month Blues Blast Magazine is featuring free Blues music downloads from some of the best new artist releases.

This issue features eight new download tracks including music from Dave Duncan, The Pam Taylor Band, Ryan Hartt & The Blue Hearts, Tweed Funk, Joel DaSilva and The Midnight Howl, Ron Levy's Wild Kingdom, Stevie DuPree & The Delta Flyers and Gary Sellers.

Scroll to the bottom of this issue to get these Free Blues tracks now!

Please please help us spread the word on Facebook and Twitter about this FREE Blues music each month. We want as many Blues lovers as possible to take advantage of this great offer from these artists.

Wishing you health, happiness and lots of Blues music!

Bob Kieser

There’s an old saying that suggests you can tell a lot about a man based on just what kind of tools he has on his workbench.

With just a passing glance, you can glean information into what kind of a job he has, what some of his hobbies are, and you even tell a little bit about his personality.

And while it’s certainly not an OLD saying, you can also tell a lot about a man based on what his e-mail address is.

Especially if the first part of that e-mail address is: carlosplaysa335.

Based on that, it doesn’t take a whole heck of a lot of deciphering to figure out that long-time Southside Chicago bluesman Carlos Johnson’s preferred axe is a Gibson ES-335.

And Johnson quickly confirms as much.

“Without a doubt, that’s my favorite guitar – the Gibson 335. And you play that through a Rivera amp – it just doesn’t get any better than that. It’s a match made in heaven,” said the left-hander. “There’s no better combination than that; ever. The 335 is just such a great guitar for whatever you want to play – jazz, rock, blues, country …”

The splendid sound that Johnson has created from his mastery of the 335/Rivera pairing is all over the highly-acclaimed Chicago Blues: A Living History series, a series that has not only been extremely well-regarded in the world of the blues, but one that has also caught the attention of the powers that be at the Grammy Awards.

And speaking of history, Johnson and the brainchild of those discs have a long and lengthy one together.

“Well, Larry Skoller actually came up under me, many, many years ago – so many that I don’t remember just how many – but for decades we were together in bands and traveled all over the world and everything,” Johnson said. “And then he moved to France and got married and started a family and he started getting into the production side of things. And he’s a natural at that. But we’ve been friends a long time.”

It didn’t take much convincing from Skoller to get Johnson on board and involved with the project.

“What I think he decided to do was; there are a lot of talented cats from here (Chicago) that needed to pick up the ball and carry it. And we’re the ones to do it. Even though we’re up there in age now, we’re still the product of our blues forefathers,” he said. “And we have to honor that. We have to keep that alive, both musically and spiritually. It’s also in memory of cats like Chico Banks. I want to give a shout-out to his family, because we still miss him very much.”

Helping to keep the blues alive and growing is nothing new for Johnson. It’s something that he’s been doing for a few decades now. Doesn’t matter if it’s in a club or in a classroom, the task of spreading the gospel of the Chicago blues has always been job number one for Johnson.

“We’ve been doing this for years and years and years. Doing Blues in the Schools with Billy Branch, we would teach them (school children) about where “Hoochie Coochie Man” came from and about the structure of a 12-bar blues song and who Muddy Waters was and information like that,” said Johnson. “Because it is up to us to perpetuate the music and the heritage with the younger people. And the same goes for the younger musicians who are coming up around town and looking up to me and guys like Billy and Carl Weathersby and Lurie Bell. They look up to us and we have to explain to them there’s a fine line between creativity and extinction. A lot of the cats want to play the Stevie Ray Vaughan stuff and the Hendrix stuff – which is fine, because everybody has to learn from somebody else – but what you still have to do is keep that common thread in between so you don’t blur the line so much that it can still be distinguished as the blues.”

As would be expected from someone who’s been playing the blues in every nook and cranny around the Windy City as long as he has, Johnson has rubbed elbows and traded licks with a cast of larger-than-life personalities, including a fellow southpaw that was also known for his prowess at running up and down the neck of a six-string.

“Oh, yeah. Lefty Dizz. Me and him were both left-handed and we both played the guitar inverted. I used to call him son and he’d call me father and then he’d call me son and I’d call him father. He’d say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be just like you.’ And then I’d say the same thing to him,” laughed Johnson. “But me and Lefty played together all through the 70s. He was something. And then of course I played with Junior (Wells) and Otis (Rush) and Koko (Taylor) and Son (Seals) … just all the cats, and the girls, too, here in Chicago. I don’t think there’s been many people that I haven’t played with”

Johnson just didn’t strictly play with all those legends inside the city limits of Chicago, either. He packed up his guitar on more than one occasion and traveled the globe with them, including one memorable trip to Son Seals’ hometown stomping grounds of Osceola, Arkansas, where Johnson learned how the locals down there liked to toss their dice.

“Yeah, we were touring once and stopped in his town and went to this little shack beside the road (the infamous Dipsy Doodle Club, a juke joint owned by Seals’ father, Jim) and everybody knew him. And they were teaching me how to gamble out of the horn – which I was really awkward at because I was used to throwing dice in the back alleys of Chicago – but that was one of the best times I ever had with Son, right there in his hometown.”

Early in his career as a budding bluesman, Johnson found out that there was way more to the art than just the ability to play a guitar or to sing a song. He learned that in order to really play the blues, you must first understand how to live life.

“When I first started playing, I used to go down to Theresa’s and try to sit in. And Sammy Lawhorn took me under his wings. He was my first real teacher as far as the blues were concerned,” Johnson said. “And after him, I studied under Buster Benton a while. But those guys taught me so much about the blues. Not only about the blues, but about life, too, and how those two things are intertwined and connected. About how you can’t really separate the blues and life if you’re really passionate about being a blues artist.”

Although he might not have realized the impact that first picking up the guitar as a small child would have on his future life, there were a couple of other people close to Carlos Johnson who had an idea that playing music might indeed become his life’s work.

“My parents. I think they knew. I don’t remember, but the story my mom and dad tell me is there was one of those plastic Mickey Mouse guitars – the one with the red strings on it – at our house and as they were sitting around having coffee one day, I was crawling around on the floor and picked up that guitar. As they were listening, they could hear me picking out a rhythm and playing it on that guitar. Of course I was just smashing my hands on the fretboard – I couldn’t play – but there was a rhythm coming out. I think they knew then that the guitar might play a big role in my life later on.”

Had it not been for the influence and support of his parents all those years ago, Johnson’s present vocation would probably not be as a blues musician.

And with that in mind, the project that he is currently toiling away on is dedicated to his mom and dad.

“The album that I’m getting ready to do – Deversatility – is dedicated to them, because when I was coming up, I can remember sitting in the middle of our living room floor, surrounded by a mountain of albums and my dad sitting there with a pack of cigarettes and a pint of Old Forester. Of course he wouldn’t give me any cigarettes or a drink, but we would sit there and listen to Charlie Parker and Mingus and Brubeck and things like that until the cows came home,” he said. “And my mom would always have blues and country-and-western playing. So I had all these genres of music just circulating and permeating in my head. There was always music in my household and there was always happiness when there was music.”

Those ‘mountains of albums’ played a crucial part in developing Johnson’s guitar sound. With country and jazz mixing with the blues, rock and soul in his head, it’s no wonder that the music that Johnson makes today has bits and flourishes of all the above in it.

“Yeah, once again, I call it Deversatility. That’s not a real word – I made it up – but that’s what I call my music. It’s natural or organic,” he said. “But there’s a lot of connections between the phrasings and the positions of all those different kinds of music that gives you a unique sound. Because I’m bass-akwards (left-handed) a lot of structure to the way I play is inverted, which gives you a different tone, too. And then I don’t play with a pick, I play with my thumbs, so that’s another tone variation.”

Johnson’s ‘deversatility’ carries over to the way his instruments are stung. Some of his acoustic guitars are strung left-handed and some are strung right-handed, which also adds to the remarkable sounds he coaxes from his guitars.

“I guess you could say I’m bi-stringual,” he laughed.

Johnson and his Serious Blues Band – Roosevelt Hatter Purifoy on keyboards (“My right-hand man for over 30 years now. He’s the best thing since candy,” said Johnson), Pooky Sticks on drums and bassist Bill Dickens – can still be found out on the road, playing small clubs and huge festivals, even though these may not be the most lucrative times for playing the blues.

“Well, it’s difficult now. Things are more expensive and the cost of just plain living has gone through the roof. Whereas back in the 60s and 70s you could go and play a club and make $30 or $40 and that would last you a week if you didn’t spend it all at the bar. But, everything was supplemented by family helping out – you know, staying with your sister and stuff like that,” Johnson said. “You weren’t bringing in no $600 a week, or maybe not even that a month, but a loaf of bread was only 25 cents back then, too. So because of just the economics of these times, it’s hard to earn a living playing the blues. And the way that the mainstream media has almost phased out blues as a genre doesn’t help any, either. Blues is just like the low man on the totem pole when it comes to mainstream exposure on the big stage.”

But even though it would be easy to give in and think that the fate of the blues has long ago been cast and nothing can be done to shine the spotlight brighter on the form of music, Johnson is having none of that.

“We need support. We need support with everything that’s involved with the music – the production of it, the way it’s perceived, how it’s played …the way the media looks at it. If we don’t have that kind support, we’re going to be digging out of the hole until the day we die. And hopefully we won’t get fully buried,” he said. “But it is an uphill battle. You have to remember, though, that coming from Mississippi and even Africa field hollers, all of this music was oppressed, except for when you were working, so you would be more productive. Other than that, this music has always been oppressed. I don’t know if it’s reversible, but I do know one thing – I’m going to die trying.”

Photos by Bob Kieser © 2013 Blues Blast Magazine

Interviewer Terry Mullins is a journalist and former record store owner whose personal taste in music is the sonic equivalent of Attention Deficit Disorder. Works by the Bee Gees, Captain Beefheart, Black Sabbath, Earth, Wind & Fire and Willie Nelson share equal space with Muddy Waters, The Staples Singers and R.L. Burnside in his compact disc collection. He's also been known to spend time hanging out on the street corners of Clarksdale, Miss., eating copious amounts of barbecued delicacies while listening to the wonderful sounds of the blues.

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