Johnny Burgin No Border Blues (CD)

(Delmark) 11 tracks
The 1970’s Japanese tours of Chicago blues legends Otis Rush, Jimmy Dawkins, Eddie Taylor, and others created a small but intense Japanese blues scene that bursts over with talent three generations and over forty years later. Delmark Records was there at the beginning of the Japanese love affair with hard-hitting Chicago blues, releasing Otis Rush’s So Many Roads (Delmark 643) recorded live in Japan in 1975. Many of the attendees at that show were so inspired that they went on to become Japan’s first generation of blues musicians, and to serve as inspiration to the younger artists featured on the recording we’re proud to present today.

No Border Blues is the first-ever American compilation of some of the brightest flames of the small but fervent underground blues scenes of Osaka, Tokyo, and Kyoto. It’s an unprecedented showcase of young and committed traditional blues artists that by and large never expected to be heard outside Japan (or even outside of their neighborhood “live house”), but very much deserve to be.

Recorded at Fukuda Studio, Osaka, Japan, May 2nd, 2019 except 'Two Telephones' recorded at Delmark Records, Riverside Studio, September 20, 2019

Rockin' Johnny

In mid-1990s Chicago, musical worlds burgeoned, collided and cohered. Young jazz players crafted their own take on different traditions. Rockers turned toward country. A few became rock stars. Through it all, blues singer/ guitarist Rockin' Johnny Burgin set his own pace. Back then, and today, a slew of disciples of this city's 12-bar traditions turned their tributes into overwrought clichés. Rockin' Johnny stood apart from all of that. He absorbed the right lesson from West and South Side mentors.

That was: economy should be a blues musician's ally. Pack a world into a few sharp notes and let the spaces sing for themselves. At the same time, Johnny stayed hungry enough to book his own groups throughout large cities and small towns, and tells that story in the song Shoe Leather And Tire Rubber. Meanwhile, he sharpened his skills when he served as a sideman for such legends as Tail Dragger, Jimmy Burns, Sam Lay, Pinetop Perkins, Billy Boy Arnold, Little Arthur Duncan and Jimmy Lee Robinson. Some outside gigs added fuel for his originality—like a memorable night at Beat Kitchen working alongside perverse R&B singer Andre Williams.

But when that decade ended, Johnny walked away from music. Johnny's early and, ultimately, brief time away from the stage echoed Wes Montgomery's decision in the early 1950s to hold factory jobs: the jazz guitarist had a a family to support, and remarked, "What I wanted to do didn't matter as much as what I had to do." A couple years ago, Johnny got back into performing and released NOW'S THE TIME in 2010.