Published: February 2001

Be prepared... the extraordinary Richard Leo Johnson isn't quite like any jazz guitarist you've ever heard before. Keith Shadwick checks out this surprising but welcome new signing to the Blue Note label and finds they are both talking the same Language
A new guitarist on the block? Well, almost. Johnson isn't exactly an enfant terrible, being 44 years old at the time of writing, and has been playing guitar since his callow youth, yet he has only been pursuing a professional career for the past five or so years. There was an unusual trigger for that, in fitting with the lack of convention to be found in his playing style.
As he explained over the phone from his home in Savannah, Georgia, he has been playing guitar since he was nine. 'I grew up in a small town in the delta area of Arkansas, and the rural blues players used to be heard all over the district: there were lots of places for them to play then. My own playing was just for private entertainment. I carried right through high school and university, but my vocation after that was photography. I was satisfied both creatively and professionally by photography.
"I built up a library of 300,000 images, and had moved with my wife and baby girl to the Ozarks. Five years ago my house burned to the ground in a fire. Everything was destroyed. It was quite a shock for us, but it generated a "now or never" mood. We decided to relocate to Nashville - not because I was a country music fan, but because it was close and cost-effective, and a big music centre. The move got me working on musical things and lifted the depression that the fire had created. Within a year of that I had a deal with Blue Note. More Profile >>>