Lonnie Johnson's early recordings are the first guitar recordings that display a single-note soloing style with use of string bending and vibrato. While it cannot be proven that this contains the influence of earlier players who did not record, it is the origin of Blues and Rock solo guitar. Johnson's influence is obvious in Django Reinhardt, T-Bone Walker and virtually all electric blues guitar players.
[citation needed] Raised in a family of musicians, Johnson studied violin and guitar as a child, but concentrated on the latter throughout his professional career. A 1917 tour to England with a revue may have saved his life, for he returned to New Orleans in 1919 to find that most of his family had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic.
In the early 1920s, Johnson worked with the orchestras of Charlie Creath and Fate Marable on riverboats, but he made St. Louis his home in 1925. There he entered and won an Okeh Records blues contest that resulted in his making a series of memorable recordings for the label between 1925 and 1932, including guitar duets with Eddie Lang and vocal duets with Victoria Spivey. In the 1920s, Johnson also made guest appearances on records by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, the Duke Ellington orchestra, and The Chocolate Dandies, playing 12-string guitar solos in an extraordinary, pioneering single-string style that greatly influenced such future jazz guitarists as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, and gave the instrument new meaning as a jazz voice.
Lonnie Johnson's career was a rollercoaster ride that sometimes took him away from music. In between great musical accomplishments, he found it necessary to take menial jobs that ranged from working in a steel foundry to mopping floors as a janitor. He was working at Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Hotel in 1959 when WHAT-FM disc jockey Chris Albertson happened upon him. Albertson succeeded in securing for Johnson a Chicago engagement at the Playboy Club, which launched yet another comeback. Johnson subsequently performed with Duke Ellington and his orchestra and with an all-star folk concert, both at Town Hall, New York City.
He also toured Europe and recorded several albums for the Prestige Bluesville label, some with Elmer Snowden, and one with his Okeh vocal partner, Victoria Spivey. To his great regret, Johnson was always tagged as a blues artist, and he found it difficult to be regarded as anything else. "I had done some singing by then," he explained when asked why he entered the Okeh contest, "but I still didn't take it as seriously as my guitar playing, and I guess I would have done anything to get recorded--it just happened to be a blues contest, so I sang the blues."
Johnson died in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 16, 1970 of complications resulting from a 1969 auto accident. He was posthumously inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1997.
One of Elvis Presley's earliest recordings was Johnson's blues ballad, "Tomorrow Night", which was also recorded by LaVern Baker
Bob Dylan wrote about the performing method he learned from Johnson in Chronicles, Vol. 1. Dylan thinks Robert Johnson had learned a lot from Lonnie.
Star Dust
Lonnie Johnson Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we're apart
You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by.
Sometimes I wonder, how I spend
The lonely nights
Dreaming of a song
The melody
Haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you
When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration
But that was long ago
And now my consolation is in the stardust of a song
Besides the garden wall, when stars are bright
You are in my arms
The nightingale
Tells his fairytale
Of paradise, where roses grew
Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain.
The song “Stardust” by Lonnie Johnson is a timeless classic about love, loss, and the power of memories. The haunting melody and poetic lyrics perfectly capture the feelings of longing and nostalgia that come with reminiscing about a past relationship. The opening lines of the song create a beautiful image of twilight time stealing across the meadows of the singer's heart, setting the tone for a wistful and melancholic mood. The reference to the little stars climbing high up in the sky is a poignant reminder of how far apart the singer and his lover are, highlighting the sense of distance and separation that pervades the song.
The chorus of the song is particularly poignant, with its evocative description of love as stardust - a powerful metaphor that suggests the transience and fragility of even the strongest emotions. The image of love being the music of years gone by is both beautiful and heartbreaking, reminding the listener of the ways in which time changes us all. The final verse of the song adds another layer of complexity to its meaning, as the singer describes a moment when he feels like his lover is present with him. The reference to paradise and the fairytale-like quality of the image of roses growing heightens the sense of longing created by the song, leaving the listener with a feeling of bittersweet nostalgia.
Line by Line Meaning
And now the purple dusk of twilight time
The romantic mood at sunset invokes feelings of love.
Steals across the meadows of my heart
These feelings permeate the poet's core emotion.
High up in the sky the little stars climb
As the sun sets, the stars appear, reminding the poet of separation.
Always reminding me that we're apart
The stars suggest longing and reflect the emotional distance between the poet and the beloved.
You wander down the lane and far away
The beloved has left and the poet is left behind.
Leaving me a song that will not die
The memory of the beloved and the love they shared is immortalized in a song.
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The love that existed between the poet and the beloved is now a distant memory, a thing of the past.
The music of the years gone by.
The song holds the memory of the love and allows the poet to revisit it and feel its power again.
Sometimes I wonder, how I spend
The poet reflects on the loneliness that comes after the beloved has left.
The lonely nights
The nights are long and empty without the beloved.
Dreaming of a song
The poet dreams of a song that reminds them of the beloved.
The melody
The tune is the voice of the memory of the love shared by the poet and the beloved.
Haunts my reverie
The melody constantly returns to the poet's thoughts, even in moments of reverie.
And I am once again with you
The song brings the poet back to the moment when they were with the beloved.
When our love was new
The song brings the poet back to the time when their love was young.
And each kiss an inspiration
In that time, each kiss was a moment of inspiration that drove the love forward.
But that was long ago
The time of their love is now distant and lost in the memory of the past.
And now my consolation is in the stardust of a song
The song now serves as a reminder of the love that was shared between the poet and the beloved.
Besides the garden wall, when stars are bright
In moments of quiet reflection, the poet envisions the beloved outside the garden wall under the stars.
You are in my arms
The memory of the beloved is held close, even though they are now gone.
The nightingale
The nightingale is a symbol of love and the memories of the love that was shared.
Tells his fairytale
The song takes on a magical quality in the poet's mind, much like a fairytale.
Of paradise, where roses grew
The nightingale's song takes the poet's mind to another time and place, a paradise where love was pure and free.
Though I dream in vain
The poet accepts that the dream of being with the beloved again is in vain, but the memory is still cherished.
In my heart it will remain
The memory of the love and the song that represents it will always hold a special place in the poet's heart.
My stardust melody
The song, which represents the love shared between the poet and the beloved, is filled with stardust, the magical essence of love.
The memory of love's refrain.
The song's melody and words hold the memory of the love shared between the poet and the beloved, and the chorus continues to echo even though the love has faded into the past.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: CHRISTOPHER GENTRY, JOHN HUTCHINSON DEAN, MATTHEW EVERITT, SIMON IAN WHITE, STUART BLACK
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
womo1988
Lieber YouTube-Freund. Danke für diese schöne Einstellung. Habe Sie schon
vermißt. Für heute beste Grüsse aus Neuwied am Rhein von Friedhelm.
womo1988
Danke lieber Heinz Becker für Ihre Zeilen. Da sieht man man wieder, wie
klein doch die Welt ist. Da treffe ich den Sohn von Heinz Becker, den ich
in meiner Jugend - ich bin Jahrgang 1932 - gerne hörte. AMIGA-Platten
waren damals hier bei uns im Westen Raritäten. Für Sie alles Gute
und bis später mal wieder. Herzliche Grüsse Friedhelm
Heinz Becker
@womo1988 Ich bin der Sohn von Heinz Becker, der mal fuer Amiga gearbeitet hat. Hab die 78er ewig aufgehoben und als ich mit Django Reinhard so ziemlich fertig war und auch nun die kontemporaeren sammelte, die den Jazz (Swing) spielten auch waehrend der Hitler-Zeit und nach dem Krieg in der DDR: da wollte ich mal nachschauen. Drei oder vier Aufnagmen meines Vaters bei Amiga waren/sind als "Hot-Jazz" anerkannt worden
Heinz Becker
@womo1988 Ich bin der Sohn von Heinz Becker, der mal fuer Amiga gearbeitet hat. Hab die 78er ewig aufgehoben und als ich mit Django Reinhard so ziemlich fertig war und auch nun die kontemporaeren sammelte, die den Jazz (Swing) spielten auch waehrend der Hitler-Zeit und nach dem Krieg in der DDR: da wollte ich mal nachschauen. Drei oder vier Aufnagmen meines Vaters bei Amiga waren/sind als "Hot-Jazz" anerkannt worden. .
womo1988
Lieber Heinz Becker. Neuwied ist ca. 45 km von Bonn und ca. 80 km
von Köln entfernt. Hier gibt es im Anbau nur Rheinwein. Da Sie schon
viele AMIGA-Platten - auch mit Heinz Becker Solisten eingestellt
haben, fragte ich mich schon ein paar mal, ob Sie dieser Heinz Becker,
oder sein Sohn sind. Wäre ja möglich ? Beste Grüsse Friedhelm
Heinz Becker
Freut mich Jemanden in Neuwied am Rhein zu erfreuen. Wo immer das ist. Am Rhein ist schon klar...........Ein gutrer Borgunder dort?