John Littlejohn

John Littlejohn’s spectacular mastery from the glide guitar somehow hardly ever launched him in to the main leagues of bluesdom. Just on a small number of events was the Chicago veteran’s vicious bottleneck strike captured successfully on polish, but anyone who experienced one of is own late-night classes as a particular musical guest within the Windy Town circuit won’t your investment crashing enthusiasm in his delivery. Delta-bred John Funchess 1st noticed the blues right before he reached his teenagers at a seafood fry in which a friend of his father’s called Henry Martin was playing acoustic guitar. He left house in 1946, pausing in Jackson, Mississippi; Arkansas; and Rochester, NY before winding up in Gary, Indiana. In 1951, he started inching his method in to the Gary blues picture, his Elmore James-influenced slip style producing him a popular around Chicago’s south suburbs furthermore to metal mill-fired Gary. Littlejohn waited an unconscionably very long time to polish his debut singles for Margaret (his brand treatment of Brook Benton’s “Kiddio”), T-D-S, and Weis in 1968. But prior to the 12 months was out, Littlejohn experienced also cut his debut recording, Chicago Blues Celebrities, for Chris Strachwitz’s Arhoolie logo design. It was an impressive debut, the guitarist blasting out a savage Chicago/Delta cross rooted in the first ’50s instead of its real timeframe. Regrettably, a four-song 1969 Chess day remained within the can. From then on, another long dried out spell preceded Littlejohn’s 1985 recording So-Called Close friends for Rooster Blues, an ambitious however, not completely convincing collaboration between your guitarist along with a humongous horn section that occasionally grew to eight parts. The guitarist have been in illness for quite a while ahead of his 1994 transferring.