Tommy Johnson (musician)
Tommy Johnson (1896 – November 1, 1956) was an influential American delta blues musician who recorded in the late 1920s and was known for his eerie falsetto voice and intricate guitar playing.
Early life
Johnson was born near Terry, Mississippi, and moved around 1910 to Crystal Springs, where he lived for most of his life.
He learned to play the guitar and, by 1914, was supplementing his income by playing at local parties with his brothers Major and LeDell. In 1916 he married and moved to Webb Jennings' plantation near Drew, Mississippi, close to the Dockery Plantation. There he met other musicians, including Charlie Patton and Willie Brown.
Career
By 1920 he had become an alcoholic and itinerant musician, based in Crystal Springs but traveling widely around the South, sometimes accompanied by Papa Charlie McCoy. In 1928 he made his first recordings with McCoy for Victor Records. The recordings included "Canned Heat Blues", in which he sang of drinking methanol from the cooking fuel Sterno. The song features the refrain "canned heat, mama, sure, Lord, killing me." The blues group Canned Heat took their name from this song. Johnson's "Big Road Blues" inspired Canned Heat's song, "On the Road Again". A significantly different version of the song appears as "Canned Heat" on the Big Road Blues album by K. C. Douglas.
