~Born Feb.11 1954 in Wilkes County, NC to Billie and Betty Johnson ~
Since my mom and dad as well as several uncles were involved with live radio in the 1940's, there was no end of exposure to music in our home as far back as I remember. Dad played guitar, mandolin, and fiddle, Mom played guitar, both grandfather's Bill Johnson and Claude Caudill played oldtime banjo, and Mom's brothers played guitar, mandolin, and banjo. Hardly a day went by without somebody picking and singing. Until I went to school, I thought every family played music. So I wanted to learn how to take my part. Always encouraging, each family member (especially Dad) took some time to show me a chord or two on guitar so that by the age of five, I could strum along a little. Dad purchased a guitar for me for my sixth birthday, and he and I played every day as he taught me bluegrass and hillbilly tunes from his repotoire. My days would always start in front of the television for the one hour broadcast of Authur Smith and the Crackerjacks on WBTV in Charlotte, or Dwight Barker and the Melody boys on WSJS in Winston Salem. The hallmark of these bands was their inclusion of many different instruments and musical styles.There was bluegrass, oldtime, country, ragtime, gospel, and even vaudeville comedy performed by the same group of pickers with each player performing a variety of tasks. These shows were punctuated each weekend with the Saturday evening appearance of Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys from Bristol, Va.
Needless to say, I had a constant desire to make all those sounds. About 1963 I started trying to learn the banjo. Beginning with some oldtime instruction from my grandfather Bill, I watched other players in the area and clung to the television shows to see Scruggs, Allen Shelton, Carl Hunt, Don Reno and others. This led to the formation of a weekend band consisting of two neighbors and friends, Jim Bryant and Allie Goforth, my father, and myself. We played area square dances and social functions on a steady basis for over four years. During this time I played mainly banjo but also got to experiment with fiddle, mandolin, bass, autoharp, and drums.
In 1968, I started a lifelong love affair with pedal steel guitar,essentially dropping everything for two years to learn about it and leaving my dad's band for a country group, Benny Benfield and the Country Cousins. The bass player's name was Marshal Craven who became my new mentor for the next few years teaching me the art of "roadshow" country music. The next twelve years were in this band playing warm up shows for Nashville acts, outdoor concerts at sales events, and a long string of clubs. Steel guitar was my chief joy. Sandwiched into the middle of the Marshal Craven bands was high school, and it was here that my peers got me involved in rock music of the day. Armed with and electric guitar and a fuzz box, my school buddies and I would play Steppenwolf, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Beatles tunes during the week, then I would run off to some country show for the weekend. The exposure to several different types of music was exciting for me and there was never any boredom. In the middle of these whirlwind highschool years several area recording studios began to spring up in North and South Carolina, as well as Virginia and Eastern Tennessee. As their business increased, the need for partime and fulltime staff musicians evolved as well, leading to my good luck of being asked to participate in recording a soundtrack for an industrial film about Holly Farms Poultry. Produced by Les Blank from Hollywood,Ca. the tracks were of oldtime and bluegrass instrumentals and included my father on guitar, Drake Walsh on fiddle, Marshal Craven on bass. The session was conducted at Galaxie III Studio in Taylorsville, NC, and just sharpened my appetite for more of this work. Shortly, I began working nights after school at this studio as a picker and a music teacher.
As my work expanded to other area studios (including one built in 1975 by Marshal Craven) I met many more musicians to learn from, and as there was a hotbed of southern gospel groups working the area, several of these players were pianists. From these trained musicians I got to hear some classical music and endeavored to learn more about reading number charts and chord theory. There was always something to be learned from each player and recording engineer.
I met my future wife, Anne, while she was working in a music store. We were married within a year and worked within the area school systems teaching kids about our American musical heritage. In 1981 we teamed up with my dear friend and banjo picking buddy, Darrel Bryant to form a country rock variety band, Dixie Dawn, and proceeded to canvas the Southeast in a greyhound bus playing everything from clubs and dances to sharing the stage with the Oak Ridge Boys, Alabama, and Johnny Cash. Our band years then turned in 1987 to the rise of family syle entertainment when we took a house job at Shadrack's in Boone, NC doing a country music floor show for the dinner crowd. After four successful years, we moved this show to Wilkesboro, NC at Jubilee Junction. Having slowed down somewhat in the past couple of years we still perform at Merlefest in Wilkesboro and a variety of street festivals in the area.
During the live performance years of the eighties, my recording work expanded greatly with the addition of more studios to the southeast. As a sideman, I found out that the more instruments you played, the more jobs were available. Also, the trend for work began leaning more and more to the gospel music that was so popular in the churches and singing concerts of the area. Gospel recording led me to session work in the Asheville NC area in the mid 1980's and I began an association with Eddie Swan of Dawn Records, and Mickey Gamble and Eldridge Fox of Hear Here Studios. For many years these two rooms gave me work and opportunity to meet many of the gospel performers I had grown up listening to on tv and radio. It was during this time that I first recorded for the Kingsmen, The Hoppers, Quinten Mills (with MarkV records), Palmetto State Quartet, Teddy Huffam, and others. When Eddie, Mickey, and Eldridge came together to form Horizon Music Company I was honored to be asked to stay on as regular staff and have enjoyed that job until this day. My job is a great joy in that no two days are the same.
The gospel music that I get to record and help create is all the more meaningful to me now since my surrender of my life to Jesus a few years ago. The Lord has blessed me with a beautiful family, my wife of twenty three years,Anne, and my son Nathan, and a wealth beyond measure in my musical friendships.
No man could ask for more.
