Syl Johnson - Let Them Hang High (Twinight 125)
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Let Them Hang High
Sylvester Johnson was born in Mississippi, but moved to Chicago with his family by the time he was eight years old. They lived next door to blues legend Magic Sam, and grew up surrounded by music. His brother Mac became the bass player in Sam's band, and brother Jimmy would go on to become a celebrated blues guitarist in his own right.
Syl came up playing the South Side clubs behind folks like Shakey Jake, Billy Boy Arnold, and Junior Wells and would become a member of Howlin' Wolf's touring band in 1959. His first appearance on record was as a side man for Jimmy Reed on the Vee-Jay label that same year.
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Syl recorded sporadically for some small outfits over the next few years, and scored a pretty big local hit with Straight Love, No Chaser for the Zachron label in 1966. He followed this with his ultra-rare northern soul crowd favorite, Do You Know what Love Is on the Special Agent label in early 1967.
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After just four more singles, Wright changed the name of the label to Twinight (nobody knows why...), and installed Johnson as producer and A&R man at their digs on "record row" in Chicago. The studio became somewhat of a funk incubator, with Syl lending his way cool vision of hard-edged soul to releases by The Notations and The Pieces of Peace, as well as continuing his own string of releases.
While Johnson's harmonica and guitar playing are great, it was his incredible voice that caught the ear of Memphis producer Willie Mitchell one night at a South Side club. This was during the period when Mitchell was on the lookout for singers to bring to the mostly instrumental Hi label, and he offered to record Syl if he was ever interested.
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Syl was big on "answer songs" in those days. Tunes like I'll Take Those Skinny Legs, I Can Take Care Of Business, and I Can Take Care Of Homework were tongue-in-cheek take-offs on what was going on in the charts.
Today's B side is one such record, written by Smith and Johnson as an answer to their own hit from the year before. This is pure all around good-time music, man... woo-hoo! Willie Mitchell is credited as the "arranger" on the label, and I guess that means it was recorded at Royal with Hi Rhythm. Check out that guitar work, huh? I can't tell if it's Syl or Teenie Hodges, but it's just killer stuff, yo!
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A few more singles on Twinight would follow, like the great One Way Ticket (which was written by Johnny Moore and would become a big hit for Tyrone Davis the following year), but Peter Wright had apparently lost interest in the label in much the same way as he had done a few years earlier with Quill.
In 1971, Syl signed on with Hi Records, teaming up with Mitchell full time. The records Johnson made for Hi during this period are such unreal stuff, man. Songs like Any Way The Wind Blows and Please Don't Give Up On Me still hold up as absolute soul classics.
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Johnson walked away from the music business in the mid-eighties, opening a string of seafood joints in his home town of Chicago. When he began to hear his work sampled by people like the Wu Tang Clan in the early nineties, he figured it was time to jump back in.
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He is scheduled to appear at the Ponderosa Stomp in Memphis on May 8th, the same night Hi Rhythm is going to be there...
I'm gonna be there too.
7 Comments:
I want to be there too!
Another cool one Red. Allow me to say that you're doing a dynamite job with this blog. Great records, and always informative.
i will certainly allow you to say that Larry...
folks, if you don't know who Larry is, allow ME to say that he runs THE coolest of all the audioblogs, the one that never lets ya down... the one that lit the fire under my butt (along with the mighty Home of the Groove) and got me to start diggin' through the vinyl piled around here again... I'm talkin' about FUNKY 16 CORNERS y'all!
If you've never read his incredible article The Genius of James Brown: Soul Brother Number One, you owe it to yourself to check it out!
ANYWAY... thanks a lot Mr. Grogan (who was the first guy to ever actually link to the B side, btw...) for the encouraging words.
You da man!
You da man, too, Mr Red.
I'm too drunk to read English right now but I just had a look at the Syl Johnson tribute and...love it. Nice covers and tomorrow I'll go back to read your lines
Keep it goin'.
Dominik
thanks for all those B sides
Freddy King backing Syl Johnson
on Federal??????
maybe Bobby King
sound like it's Syl Johnson himself
well 3bs, I got that little tidbit of info from these two sources:
Syl Johnson, by Bill Pollack and
blues world.com
I do try to corroborate facts that way before I put 'em up... they, of course, could be mistaken...
THEY mistaken
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