Bill Johnson

The cast of musicians associated with a gospel group called the Golden West Singers includes guitarist and bass singer Bill Johnson, one of several who ditched this outfit for secular music, perhaps corrupted by big-city nightlife. The group, first formed in the Bay Area circa 1947, kept going for nearly three decades but seemed to bleed members along the way, often in conjunction with engagements in sinful meccas such as New York City. That is where Johnson fell by the wayside, one moment keeping up a series of polite but deep harmonic backgrounds in praise of the Lord and the next servicing the devils of doo wop, a noted backdrop for smooching, beer drinking, and cigarette smoking. Examined from the drier perspective of song titles, the recording career of Johnson might have begun with a single entitled "Jesus Is Everywhere," but even before the sanitized '50s were up he had graduated, or descended according to one's point of view, to the lyrical philosophy expressed in "Chickie Um Bah." The former number was an a cappella performance by the Golden West Singers, meaning no guitar touched. Yet Johnson's vocal "boom-de-booms," subject of consistent praise from gospel music experts, provides a conceptual link with the latter song, one of many sides cut by the Moonglows during the height of doo wop's popularity. These types of groups were always either directly or indirectly influenced by gospel, regardless of worldly sins spicing up the song lyrics. If the model was simply the immensely popular Mills Brothers, this was a combo in which the role of the electric guitar was directly lifted from gospel. It's only appropriate that actual players from sacred groups such as Johnson should sidle into the limbo of pop music session work. Other defectors from the Golden West Singers included famed soul singer Joe Simon and the bluesman Johnny Fuller. ~ Eugene Chadbourne