Who was Blind Jimmy Johnson?

The blues legend known as Blind Jimmy Johnson has been debated throughout the music industry since the late 1950's. Some say it is just a legend told in the back bars of Memphis and New Orleans, but still more insist that this thundering guitar master roamed the great blues clubs across America from as early as 1911 to as late as 1998. Are the stories based on one man, or has several great bluesmen's accomplishments been combined into one great legend. Tidbits of Truth was challenged to find out.

We began our investagation in Memphis, a city known as the home of the blues. Here our scout, Scooter, had managed to located a retired blues singer named Nanny Langford living just outside of town. We found Nanny sitting on the porch of her home making a hat out of Lima beans. At first she thought Brad was a Fuller Brush Salesman and wanted to shoot him, but we soon persuaded her that he was harmless and she agreed to answer our questions.

Nanny told us of a time when she was singing with a band led by Mickey Martin. The band had some young future blues greats in it including Big Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Snooky Pryor and Leonard Nemoy. They used to play at a club on Beale Street called Little Paul's. She told us of a night in the winter of 1940 when an old bluesman came into the club and asked to play for some supper and a few drinks. He smelled of the road, so Little Paul wanted to toss him out, but Big Willie talked him into letting the old man play between sets. Her eyes lit up as she told us how the room can alive the moment he struck the first cord, and how the others joined in for an all night jam. Nanny said he never told them his name, but Big Willie always said it was him. She also gave us what some say is the only known photo of Blind Jimmy.

With a copy of the photo, and not convinced that a hat made of Lima beans was a good idea in August, our team left Nanny and headed into Memphis. Our first stop was the old building where Little Paul's used to sit. It's now a Blockbuster, so we rented a copy of "Spiderman 2" and headed off to town hall to see if anyone else living in Memphis was old enough to have been at Little Paul's in 1940. Along the way Brad bought a Pretzel dipped in honey and entertained us by running from bees for nearly twenty minutes.

With not much to go on except Nanny's story, an old photo and a couple of bee stings, things weren't looking good for this investigation. The crew looked depressed and even a few minutes of finger puppets did little to raise their spirits. Everywhere we went seemed like a dead end. Our last hope was the City's Department of Water, and fate was waiting for us there.

Inside the department of water was Gus Adler, the oldest man in Tenneesse. Gus was there to have his teeth cleaned, so the folks were trying to explain to him he was at town hall, when suddenly he noticed our picture. The years seemed to fall off him as Gus began ranting about "those people" hanging around the front of his store. It turns out the picture was taken in front of Gus' Cigar & Hat Shop on Oak Street around 1940. When I asked him if he knew the folks in the picture he pointed at the man laughing in the middle and said, "That's that Blind Jimmy feller." Gus then took a swing at Jake and grabbed Norma's butt before the Memphis police arrived.

For the next several days we tried to track down anyone who knew Gus in the old days, but they were all either dead or pissed off at him. We heard a lot of other stories about Blind Jimmy. One said he made a pact with the Devil and then tricked him into a free can of Spam. Another told of a time he got Bob Hope so angry that the comic great slapped him. I think my favorite was that of a gentle old man, sitting under a cool shady tree on Beale Street, wearing nothing but some undershorts and playing the blues like he didn't have a care in the world.

There is some evidence to suggest that Blind Jimmy Johnson was paid five dollars to cut a song for Decca Records under the name of Blind Blues Darby, but the contract is signed with an "X". With a photo and two eye witnesses, one with a Lima bean hat, Tidbits of Truth must believe that Blind Jimmy Johnson was indeed a blues legend and not a blues myth. More information about him is still being researched at this time, but your team at T.O.T.'s wanted to share the progress of this case at this point.