Jef Lee Johnson

Guitarist Jef Lee Johnson is well-known being a program musician, playing for everybody from pop superstars like Aretha Franklin and Billy Joel, to even jazz vocalists like Phyllis Hyman and Rachelle Ferrell, to fearless experimentalists like Ronald Shannon Jackson and McCoy Tyner. (He also has a middle-’80s stint because the business lead guitarist in Paul Shaffer’s World’s Many Dangerous Band, the home band for NIGHT TIME With David Letterman, under his belt.) His single albums, you start with 1996’s Blue, are similarly wide-ranging affairs, veering from straightforward pop tracks to guitar-noise tests that recall both Sonny Sharrock and Sonic Youngsters. Delivered in Philadelphia, Johnson grew up within a musical family members, claiming early affects as different as Natural herb Alpert, Eric Dolphy, and Vanilla Fudge. Finding ’70s fusion and electric powered Chicago blues as an adolescent, Johnson was motivated to consider up electric guitar in earnest, initial playing in garage area bands along with his close friends, then shifting to NY to take program and live gigs. Whenever using free of charge jazz drummer Jackson in the first ’90s, Johnson found the eye of Jackson’s A&R guy, who agreed upon him to some solo offer. His first record, 1996’s Blue, was put together from many years’ worthy of of one-man music group demo cassettes, and its own extreme musical range made the vocalist/guitarist challenging to pigeonhole. Johnson’s single career hasn’t been his major concentrate, as his period as a program musician has extended to including anatomist and production responsibilities for a number of functions; but he adopted up with 1998’s Communion, 2000’s The Singularity, as well as the 2001 double-disc arranged Hype Factory, that was quickly accompanied by the brand-new Saint Someone. Also in 2001, Johnson released a trio recording, News From your Jungle, with Sonny Thompson and Michael Bland. Johnson passed on from pneumonia problems on Jan. 28, 2013.