Lonnie Johnson invented the single-string guitar solo. Before him, the guitar was a rhythm instrument -- strummed, not picked. Lonnie played single-note lines that sang like a horn, bending and slurring notes decades before anyone called it a guitar solo.
He recorded with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Every blues, jazz, and rock solo traces back to him.
Alonzo Johnson from New Orleans was a violinist before he was a guitarist, and he brought the violin's melodic sensibility to the six-string. He was a star in the 1920s and 30s -- Tomorrow Night was a hit. He recorded with Eddie Lang, the great white jazz guitarist, in a duo that crossed racial lines in the segregated recording industry. He adapted effortlessly to every shift in popular taste.
The 1950s weren't kind. He worked as a janitor in a Philadelphia hotel, playing occasional gigs. The folk revival rediscovered him in the 1960s. He recorded for Folkways, toured Canada, and finally got some of the recognition he'd always deserved.
He died in 1970. Every guitarist who ever played a solo, from B.B. King to Jimi Hendrix, owes Lonnie Johnson a debt.
