For those of you who might not know…about the Gangster of Love: Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson

 

More appreciated outside of his native US...never fully credited his musicians...Andre Lewis was once a band member...guitar was not his first instrument...influenced by the rapid fire, multi-note guitar shuffle style of Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown...died too soon, before his mother…yes, Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson had more than a few things in common with Frank Zappa.

Watson was born in Houston, Texas in 1935. His father taught him to play piano and before he was a teenager, he inherited his late preacher grandfather’s guitar on the proviso that he didn’t play ‘the devil’s music’ on it. It wasn’t long before he was working as a vocalist, pianist, and guitarist.

In 1950, Watson’s parents separated and his mother moved to LA, taking her son with her. As Young John Watson, he won several talent shows which led to work with Chuck Higgins And His Mellotones, with whom he played piano on the single Pachuko Hop. The Mothers of Invention would later perform the song in concert, and Zappa also referenced it in both Jelly Roll Gum Drop and Debra Kadabra.

Watson co-wrote the song’s b-side, Motor Head Baby, which was the inspiration for Euclid James Sherwood’s nickname and Higgins made it onto the Freak Out! list of influencers.

Watson would get his own enduring nickname from the 1954 film Johnny Guitar, saying “I always wanted to associate with what is commercial, and it sounded like an outlaw or gangster name, but he was a good guy – like the Lone Ranger.” The film starred Mercedes McCambridge, who later appeared in Run Home Slow (1965) and was the voice of Pazuzu, the evil spirit that possesses Regan, in The Exorcist (1973).

Before he was 20, Watson’s solo single Space Guitar would showcase his electric guitar playing. Those Lonely, Lonely Nights (1955), Three Hours Past Midnight (1956) and Gangster Of Love (1957) would follow, though none were major hits.

Zappa would nevertheless cite Three Hours Past Midnight as his inspiration in becoming a guitarist: “I never heard anybody with that much treble on their guitar in those days. If you listen to other rhythm and blues records of the time featuring guitar, none of them have had that kind of icepick-in-the-forehead tone. When I was in high school I used to hear the blues records that Watson was doing, and I just loved them. They drove me crazy. I kept this one juke box in operation at this chilli place down the street from the high school for about a year because they had Three Hours Past Midnight on it. I used to listen to it about three times a day at lunch.”

Watson was lifelong friends with Obie Jessie (composer of Mary Lou, as covered by Zappa in 1982 – see The Man From Utopia and You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 4). Although they never recorded together, they were part of ‘package shows’, along with Guitar Slim and others.

Watson’s eponymous debut album, released in 1963, was produced by Johnny Otis, who was an early champion of Watson’s and had taken him on tour in the 50s.

Throughout the 60s, Watson toured and recorded with his friend Larry Williams (pianist and composer of Slow Down, Dizzy, Miss Lizzy and Bad Boy, all covered by The Beatles), who introduced Watson to the British press as “Elvis Presley’s guitarist.” This was in the days before Full Fact and Grok, of course.

In 1965, Larry and Johnny recorded a single in tribute to the Fab Four called Beatle Time, which also featured Don ‘Sugarcane’ Harris.

Together, Williams and Watson produced and played on The Explosive Little Richard (1967), the first album by Mr Penniman for Okeh Records.

Watson played guitar and provided background vocals on four tracks on Nolan Porter’s 1972 album, Nolan – most notably on the singles If I Could Only Be Sure and Singer Man. Porter would of course later marry Frank’s sister, Candy.

In early 1975, when Zappa and George Duke were adding the final touches to the One Size Fits All album, Watson just happened to be at the same studios. Duke knew Watson and introduced him to Frank, who told him what a huge fan he was; he asked whether he would sit in with them, and Watson was happy to oblige.

Said Zappa, “He did that rant on the end of Andy in one take. I just told him what I wanted him to say in there, and he just went for it. It was just perfect. The other things on there took a little bit more rehearsal, but he’s also doing the bass vocal on Florentine Pogen – the one part that’s going ‘bad-a-boom-boom-maw.’” He was additionally credited with ‘flambe vocals’ on the out-chorus of San Ber’dino.

Although Watson would become firm friends with Zappa, he said he “never got into” Frank’s music. He was though happy to record with him and even considered touring with Frank – who recalled, “At one point Johnny almost went on the road with us. I asked him to join the band for this one tour, and he wanted $500 a week more than anybody else in the band was getting, so I couldn’t afford to do it. But that would have been a hysterical tour. That was when George Duke was still in the band. Can you imagine what that would have sounded like? Because Johnny also plays keyboards as well as guitar. I thought that it would be really neat to go out on the road with him.”

As well as One Size Fits All, in 1975 Watson sang and played on the title track of George Duke’s solo album I Love the Blues, She Heard My Cry.

Part of the reason Zappa hired Andre Lewis to replace George Duke in 1975 was the fact that he was Watson’s bandleader at the time.

After Lewis left Zappa, he recorded a version of Dirty Love for his Mandré album on Motown Records. Watson helped write a couple of songs for it (Masked Music Man and Masked Marauder).

In the 70s, Watson reinvented himself as a funk/soul singer and took to wearing a pimp hat, gold teeth, sunglasses and plenty of bling. His 1976 album, Ain’t That A Bitch (engineered by Kerry McNabb and featuring Walt Fowler on trumpet), was a big hit and subsequently sampled by the likes of Ghostface Killah and Ice Cube. The title track of his next album, A Real Mother For Ya (1977), was ‘borrowed’ for a 1990s UK TV advert for McCain Oven Chips!

Although Watson claimed to have played organ on the title track of his friend Herb Alpert’s 1979 album Rise (a number 1 single in the US), Randy ‘Badazz’ Alpert – the producer and writer of the piece, and Herb’s nephew – disputes this and says Watson actually appeared – playing guitar – on his uncle’s next album, Beyond.

In the 80s, Zappa would recruit Watson again to sing the songs In France (Them Or Us, 1984), Brown Moses (Thing-Fish, 1984 – he also adds some asides to He’s So Gay) and I Don’t Even Care (Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention, 1985), where he got a co-wrote credit and also played lead guitar.

A sample of Watson saying “YEAH!” from I Don’t Even Care can also be heard on the tracks Porn Wars (FZ Meets The MOP) and King Kong (Make A Jazz Noise Here, 1991).

On 22 July 1984, Watson was one of a number of guests who joined Zappa on stage at the Palace Theater in Los Angeles.

Watson also attended the soirée at UMRK on 8 January 1993 that was filmed by the BBC. In the footage, Watson can be seen playing an acoustic guitar (handed to him by Mike Keneally) and joining in on a version of The Song Of The Caravan Drovers with the Tuvan throat singers Kongar-ool Ondar and Huun-Huur-Tu, accompanied by The Chieftains, L. Shankar and Terry Bozzio.

When the Zappa family were told that Lou Reed would be inducting Frank into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, they suggested Watson might be a better choice; sadly, the committee stuck to its guns.

R&B/gospel singer Etta James met Watson in her teens while on the road with Johnny Otis in the fifties. She once stated that her whole ballad style came from imitating Watson. He would take her under his wing and helped her for many years. She fell in love with him, saying she would crawl across the floor to get to him. But this would prove futile: “Unfortunately, he saw me as his sister,” she said.

Robert ‘Bobby’ Martin would work extensively with James, who he said was his great mentor: she encouraged him to sing with her during live performances over a period of fifteen years. You can hear him all over her Live From San Francisco album, recorded just months before he auditioned for Frank.

In 1998, James paid tribute to Watson by recording a version of his I Want To Ta-Ta You Baby from Ain’t That a Bitch.

The song was about one of Watson’s many girlfriends, Tasha, who was selling dime bags of heroin when they first met. She was with him when he recorded his vocals for One Size Fits All and remembered that “Frank’s Espresso machine made me higher than I’ve ever been!”

Dweezil would also cover the song as a tribute to his dad’s friend a few times while touring in 2016; an excellent rendition is available from his website, featuring Mikki Hommel on lead vocals.

Watson collapsed midway through singing Superman Lover on stage in Yokohama, Japan on 17 May 1996 following a fatal heart attack. His funeral took place six days later at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale; Dweezil was one of the pallbearers.

 

For more on Watson, check out the book The Gangster of Love: Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, Performer, Preacher, Pimp by Vincent Bakker.

This is an edited version of an article from my Frank Zappa FUQ Vol. 4 eBook.

Illustration by JERRY (Torigoe Ryuichi)