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Biography of Shirley Johnson

Like so many African-American vocalists, Shirley Johnson started out singing in church and then went on to embrace secular music. The Chicago resident, whoseinfluences range from Mahalia Jackson to Koko Taylor, Etta James, and Ruth Brown, is a gritty, big-voiced blues singer who can also handle soul and gospel. Although Johnson has spent much of her adult life inChicago, the Windy City is not her hometown; she was born in Franklin, VA, on June 7, 1949, and raised in Norfolk, VA. Johnson came from a very religious family and she was only six when she startedsinging gospel in a church choir. Johnson's family didn't think much of either the blues or R&B, which are considered sinful in some of the stricter, more fundamentalist Christian churches.Nonetheless, she managed to hear the blues as a little girl and fell in love with secular black music; despite her parents' disdain for the blues and R&B, she developed a healthy appreciation of Brown,James, and Taylor, as well as male bluesmen like B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Little Milton, and the late Z.Z. Hill. None of those artists have been blues purists and James, in fact, is primarily asoul singer who often detours into the blues and listening to them obviously taught her that the blues and classic soul often go hand in hand. When Johnson reached adulthood in the late '70s, she wasfree to pursue a career in secular music, so she made her presence felt in Norfolk's blues and R&B circles and went on to become an opening act for Aretha Franklin, Jerry Butler, Z.Z. Hill, andother well-known artists who were passing through town. In the early '80s, she recorded some singles for two regional labels in Virginia and those recordings caught the attention of a man who wasplanning to start a label in Chicago. The aspiring record man expressed interest in recording Johnson and sent her a plane ticket to Chicago, but when she arrived in the Windy City she learned he didn't...