[Dixielandjazz] Lonnie Joihnson -- Elmer Snowden

[Steve Voce]

I didn't know that Lonnie played the violin, and would liked to have heard it. Did he play in a
jazz context?
I saw him at New Brighton in England in, I think, 1952. He was the very first American
jazz musician I'd ever seen (Billy Banks was the next, and then Cab Calloway, the ultimate jazz gentleman).
One night I went to see Josh White at the Cavern, some years later to be infested by the Beatles. We went afterwards
to Liverpool's Press Club, which stayed open 24 hours a day under special licensing so that reporters, who
worked unusual hours, could get a drink at any time. We stayed there until two in the morning when we went
back to my house, loaded. After we played some records, I put Josh to bed in a spare room and I flaked out
asleep. Sometime later the first Mrs Voce (who didn't know that I'd brought Josh home because she'd been
in bed asleep when we arrived) was awakened by coughing. She got up in the dark to investigate, switched on
the landing light, and there stood Josh, stark naked, looking for the lavatory.
They both got over it, he rather sooner than she did.

Steve Voce

On 05/03/2011 19:35, ROBERT R. CALDER wrote:

> Lonnie was really more of the pre-jazz generation, with the ballads in his
> repertoire from the start, and a master guitarist (excellent fiddler too) close
> enough to what became blues to work things out applying a fairly orthodox guitar
> technique, make dozens of recordings, and have a lot of fans and imitators, not
> least the superlatively blues-accomplished Robert Johnson. 
>
> Josh White was an east coast bluesman who managed to survive as a professional
> musician by getting in with folkies and indeed Commies, a very different later
> career after an earlier one unlike the other guys mentioned.
>
>
>
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