“I got a lot of sound out of them pots and pans!” he says. So that’s how I got to singing alongside of him, because he was singing words to a song that I never heard before.” He always sang real low like he was talking. “Everybody had to shut up because Daddy sang low. “We did everything we were supposed to do out in the field.” Johnny’s father encouraged his sons to pursue musical careers.
“We picked cotton and cut grapes,” he says. “I put the horns on it, and it came out really good.” Kid’s two instrumentals pay fiery tribute to Albert Collins (“Snowplow”) and Earl Hooker (“Hookline”).įresno-born Johnny hailed from a huge sharecropping family. Tucker’s vocal exuberance is a delight on the slashing “Have A Good Time Tonight” and a funky “Gotta Do It One Time.” “I just kind of started playing that groove, and he came up with that,” says Ramos of the latter. “But it worked!” “What’s The Matter” has Kid conjuring up Albert King’s fret fire as Tucker rides the rhumba-tinged rhythm his crashing slide powers an Elmore James-patterned “Dance Like I Should.” “Man, I laughed for two days doing that song, ‘What’s On My Mind,’” says Johnny. Special guest Bob Corritore’s wailing harp spices the Windy City shuffle “Can’t You See” and a hurtling “What’s On My Mind,” the latter stoked by Leyland’s two-fisted boogie 88s. “It’s got that true vibrato,” notes Ramos. The Allstars give each song its own special sound, Ramos’ crisp T-Bone Walker-influenced picking driving the jumping “All Night Long, All Night Wrong” and a sumptuous downbeat “There’s A Time For Love.” Johnny roars the swamp poppish “If You Ever Love Me” and a Magic Sam-styled “Treat Me Good” with Kid hooked up to a shimmery Magnatone amp. So tightly constructed are Johnny’s ten numbers that you’d never suspect their improvisatory origins. And the band was a great band, so they were just able to follow my lead.” “Everything was pretty much first or second take, and I just had all these grooves in my mind. “I just started calling out these different grooves, and we just went through them and let the tape roll, and Johnny was in his booth and he started making up words,” says Kid. “We go way back.” The combination meshed from the get-go. Bob recruited Los Angeles guitar mainstay Kid Ramos as his producer this time, Ramos assembling his Allstars, featuring ace pianist Carl Sonny Leyland, to handle the swinging backing. “I listen to the song one time, and then I be putting it together.”īob Auerbach, Johnny’s manager, owns the HighJohn label, previously the source for Tucker’s acclaimed CDs Why You Lookin’ At Me? in 20’s Seven Day Blues. Everything was right on time, like I’ve been doing the same songs for a long time, and that’s the first time I ever did it. “I didn’t know what I was going to say until I said it. “It just flowed in my head,” says the Fresno, California-based singer. That’s the way he did it throughout Johnny Tucker 75 and Alive. He puts together lyrics inside the recording studio, listening to the band and coming up with words to fit their grooves. If Johnny’s a rare commodity as an electrifying vocalist, his songwriting technique is even more unusual. His powerful pipes testify to a lifetime proudly spent singing and living the blues in ways that are no longer possible. Voices like Johnny Tucker’s barely exist anymore in today’s guitar-dominated blues world.