{"id":2448381,"date":"2019-09-05T15:57:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T21:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=880678"},"modified":"2019-09-05T15:57:14","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T21:57:14","slug":"jimmy-johnson-muscle-shoals-guitarist-who-backed-soul-rock-giants-dead-at-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/jimmy-johnson-muscle-shoals-guitarist-who-backed-soul-rock-giants-dead-at-76\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Johnson, Muscle Shoals Guitarist Who Backed Soul & Rock Giants, Dead at 76"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jimmy Johnson, the guitarist for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (a.k.a. \u201cthe Swampers\u201d)  whose foundational R&B-based playing could be heard on hundreds of records, including iconic hits by Aretha Franklin<\/a>, Paul Simon, Wilson Pickett<\/a> and Lynyrd Skynyrd, died at the age of 76. His death was confirmed by his son Jay Johnson, who did not reveal a cause of death. \u201cHe is gone,\u201d his son wrote on Facebook.<\/a> \u201cPlaying music with the angels now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mighty Jimmy Johnson has passed,\u201d Jason Isbell, who grew up in the Shoals area, said on Twitter<\/a>. \u201cA lot of my favorite music wouldn\u2019t exist without him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in the South in the 1950s, Johnson was drawn to the blooming sounds of rock, R&B and the electric blues. \u201cI guess you\u2019d say my inspiration was Chuck Berry,\u201d he said in an interview<\/a> earlier this year. \u201cMy parents always tried to get me to play country music and I just didn\u2019t like it that much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson began to study the guitar-playing of artists like Berry, Jimmy Reed and Bo Diddley. After gigging in the Northwest Alabama area as a teenager, Johnson began working at Rick Hall\u2019s FAME studios in Muscle Shoals in the early Sixties, where he eventually began playing on sessions by R&B greats like Aretha Franklin, Etta James, and Clarence Carter. Asked about the secret to his backing band\u2019s ability to back such a wide cross section of American pop music earlier this year<\/a>, Johnson had a simple answer. \u201cWe would try to never play the same lick twice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In 1969, Johnson, alongside FAME backup musicians Roger Hawkins, Barry Beckett, and David Hood, left Hall to found the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Over the next decade, everyone from Paul Simon and Bob Dylan to Cher and Jimmy Cliff would record at the studio, using the Swampers as their backup band. At Muscle Shoals Sound, Johnson also became an influential recording engineer, serving as the engineer for the Rolling Stones\u2019 famous Sticky Fingers\u201d <\/em>sessions in 1969, which produced \u201cWild Horses,\u201d \u201cBrown Sugar\u201d and \u201cYou Gotta Move.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being a member of one of the most foundational session groups in American musical history, Johnson was a humble musician who was never eager for attention. \u201cThe best way to put it is we consider ourselves backup players,\u201d<\/span> he said recently<\/a>, \u201cnot stars.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In later years, Johnson remained active in the Shoals\u2019 music community, producing and engineering records at his own Swamper Sound Studio and serving as a member of the board for the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Johnson enjoyed a resurgence in the interest of the area after playing a large role in the 2013 documentary Muscle Shoals<\/em>, which told the story of FAME and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe name was based on all the water around here, the Tennessee River, you know that kind of thing \u2013 and it has inspired a lot of our music,\u201d Johnson said in 2014<\/a>, explaining the origin of the name of his band. \u201cPeople have always asked, \u2018Why did it happen here? Tell us why?\u2019 And we would say, \u2018It\u2019s in the water!\u2019 But we were honored to be a bunch of southern rednecks who were able to play so many different types of music.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jimmy Johnson, the guitarist for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (a.k.a. \u201cthe Swampers\u201d)  whose foundational R&B-based playing could be heard on hundreds of records, including iconic hits by Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, Wilson Pickett and Lynyrd Skynyrd, died at the age of 76. His death was confirmed by his son Jay Johnson, who did not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2448381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 08:50:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2448381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2448381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2448381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2448381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}