Clarksdale bluesman wins governor's award
But this year the Clarksdale bluesman made famous by his clucking and his catch phrase, "somebody shoot that thang," has earned something less fleeting than a smile - the 2004 Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Announced Tuesday by the Mississippi Arts Commission, the award celebrates outstanding and visionary work in the performing arts and will be awarded Feb. 13 at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson.
Four other recipients were also named by the Arts Commission: the Greenville Arts Council, the Rankin County School District, Malcom White and Mary Katharine Loyacono McCravey.
"Many of these awards actually reflect a lifetime of great achievement and art for which these people or organizations take part in," said Tim Hedgepeth, executive director of the Arts Commission. "I think (Johnson's) excellence as a musician and his dedication to the blues tradition - and also his great reputation as a teacher and a performer for young people - earned him this award."
Born in Darling on Feb. 16, 1951, Johnson grew up on a farm chasing chickens and learning their language. First he taught himself to cluck like his feathered playmates and later he taught his guitar to imitate the sounds.
But "Super Chikan" wasn't born until his teen-aged years when he began playing bass in the juke joints with his uncle W.C. Handy Award winner Big Jack Johnson.
Thirty years later, the showman has released three albums - one of which earned five Living Blues awards - and toured the world with his homestyle version of the blues.
T
he Governor's award puts the latest feather in Johnson's career cap.
"I found out about it two weeks ago," Johnson said. "It was unbelievable. I couldn't believe it. They first told me I was nominated for the Governor's Art award, and I didn't even know nothing about it - 'What is it?' It was for excellence in arts. I was flabbergasted. Then I turned around and won. I figured I would just be nominated and that's it."
Johnson is the latest in a string of blues musicians who previously won the award, now in its 16th year. Johnny Billington and Little Milton also took home earlier awards, according to Shelley Powers, public relations director for the Arts Commission.
"Super Chikan is just amazing," she said. "He definitely stands out as an artist."
Over the years, Johnson has entertained crowds both at home and abroad, in juke joints and elementary schools.
In 2001, he played for a group of school children during a trip to Senegal, Africa.
"The children there loved me," Johnson said. "They had a lot of questions. They wanted to know how I felt being around a bunch of poor kids. I said 'Well, I feel right at home, because I'm a poor kid, too.'"
An ambassador abroad and a hero at home, Johnson attracts large crowds at nearly every local show.
"Super Chikan is basically one of my favorite bands we've ever had," said Morgan Wood, former manager of Ground Zero Blues Club. "We always got a different type of crowd with him - it was people who had never come in before, tourists who had seen him in different parts of United States and traveled here to come see him.
"He is energetic, down to earth and isn't in it for the money; he's in it to make things better. In my opinion, Super Chikan deserves any award that they nominated him for."
By EMILY Le COZ,
Staff Writer
©Clarksdale Press Register 2004
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BARNYARD FUN WITH SUPER CHIKAN
One of Mississippi's most eccentric bluesmen, James "Super Chikan" Johnson was hatched in the winter of 1951. His first "guitar" consisted of a one-string baling wire he stretched himself. At age 19 he began hitting the jukes, playing bass with his uncle, Big Jack Johnson, a Mississippi favorite and a man to whom the Chikan bears a startling physical resemblance. Somewhere along the way, Chikan also discovered he could perfectly imitate the screeches of barnyard fowl, and saw fit to incorporate such sounds both live and on his two discs of music: Blues Come Home To Roost (Rooster Blues, 1999) and What You See (Fat Possum, 2000).
How did you get the name Super Chikan?
I was about nine years old. I used to talk with the chickens. I was too young to go to the field. I was home with the chickens, just me and the chickens. I would sit on the front porch and the chickens would come by and say, "**&^^^^^%%%$#####!!!" One rooster used to get up by my window every morning about six o'clock and wake me up. He'd say, "Mr. Joooohnsoooooon!!!!!!"
When you were just a little Chikan he called you Mr. Johnson?
Yeah. "Mr. Joooohnsooooooon!!! Get up, feed me! Get up, feed me!!!!!"
Tell me about "Super Chikan Strut" on Blues Come Home To Roost.
We almost filled up the album, but they needed one more song about me. I just came up out of the blue with that song. I didn't write it out. I just started singing, "Well, they call me Super Chikan!" That one isn't written down anywhere.
What were you doing before you started playing professionally?
I'd done land leveling and surveying. Then I started driving trucks. That's when I wrote the most songs. Between the miles, ideas, thoughts, and memories came across. The job wasn't what I really wanted to do anyway, so I started to write songs. I really didn't intend to sing any of them. I thought, "I'll just write songs for other people. I'm a pretty good poet." So I went home and had me a homemade studio. I put a lot of music to all those songs, and took them to Rooster Blues. Jim O'Neal heard them, and he liked them. He asked when I wanted to get started recording. I said, "Oh, I don't want to record them myself. I just write them for other people. I can't sing, and plus I don't have the money to go into the studio anyway." He said nobody sings a song like the one who wrote it. "You wrote them, these are your songs. You had your feelings when you wrote them, and nobody can sing them the way you would." I told him again that I couldn't sing. He told me that I could. I said I didn't have money for the studio. He said, "With music like this you don't need money for the studio." So we recorded it.
How did you move from Rooster to Fat Possum?
Rooster moved out of Clarksdale. I wasn't with anybody at the time. I was playing over in Oxford [Mississippi] one night, and Fat Possum happened to be there and heard me. They were blown away. They wanted to record me, and asked if I would sign up. I said that as far as I knew I was still signed up with Rooster. So we called Rooster and got an okay for me to sign with Fat Possum.
Some of your songs are political, like "Mr. Rich Man."
Oh yeah, and "Captain Love Juice." That one's got a hidden story in it. Captain Love Juice was a runaway slave. He said, "I tried to run away from the show, but Mr. Money said you can't go." He tried to run away from the farm, and he got caught, and they brought him back. He tried again and got away, and he went to New York. He was the Mandingo breeding slave, a big strong guy. He was always in a little cubicle with a bunch of women. He thought that was the way of life. So when he got free he went up north to New York, and he tried to have that many women again.
What happened?
It didn't work. Late one night he had 15 enemies scratching like a cat. All the women jumped on him and beat him up. They tied him to the foot of the bed and left him for dead. He wasn't much good when they got done with him. He didn't know what was happening. He tried to go back to the farm, but Mr. Money had found somebody else. Captain Love Juice didn't have enough to fill a mustard jar [laughs]. Now that you know the story you can listen to that song differently.
By Natasha Nargis
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BIOGRAPHY
Super Chikan was hatched on February 16, 1951, in Darling, Mississippi. Birth records listed his name, however, as James Louis Johnson. He grew up in Delta cotton country, where he used to chase chickens around the yard trying to figure out what they were saying. Later, when he learned music, he taught his guitar to cackle like a chicken. From then on everybody knew him as Super Chikan.
Super Chikan always heard music around the house. His grandfather, Ellis Johnson, played fiddle with a local string band, and his uncle, Big Jack Johnson, would visit every Sunday and play guitar. Super Chikan played a one-string guitar made out of baling wire before he bought himself a real acoustic guitar when he was 13. It had two strings on it. When he was 19, Super Chikan started playing in the juke joints with Uncle Big Jack.
He also started driving tractors and dirt scrapers, working as a land leveler. Since Big Jack drove an oil truck and was known in blues circles as "the Oil Man," Super Chikan thought of calling himself "the Dirt Man." When he was a cab driver in Clarksdale, people also called him "Fast Red" (because he drove a red taxi) or "Quick Chicken."
It was when he got a new job as a truck driver that Super Chikan really started to write songs. Out on the highway, he would always be writing songs in his head. When he came off the road, Super Chikan would record his new compositions on a cassette, using a homemade overdubbing system so that he could sing and play all the instruments on each song.
Chikan's blues range in mood from playful to heartrending. His debut CD, Blues Come Home to Roost, features 14 of his original compositions, recorded at the Rooster Blues recording studio in Clarksdale, Mississippi. --
ROOSTER BLUES
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REVIEW
"James 'Super Chikan' Johnson can be a funny guy for a bluesman. He's a songwriter extraordinaire, and his blues can be wonderfully humorous, probingly insightful, lovingly warm, mysteriously cryptic, or deeply emotional. He deals not only with human relationships, but in the sociology of the Mississippi Delta where he has lived all his life, working as a land leveler, truck driver, and blues musician. Super Chikan thrives on being different. It shows in his musical arrangements, in his lyrics, and even the way he intentionally misspells his nickname (which came from his ability to make his guitar cackle like a chicken). This is blues born in the farmlands and small towns of Mississippi, but it's blues with a message for everyone."
JIM O'NEAL
Buck Buck, Buck Buck
Didn't know nothin' about no Super Chikan, never heard tell of the man, and ain't never been to Doylestown neither, not one time. But I got a visual of the city looking all pretty and upstanding and it just don't compute that Super Chikan--whoever he is--would be roosting with the Doylestown denizens this Friday. This would take some serious investigation. Turns out, Super Chikan sings the blues. (Like that's a surprise?) Other stuff learned about Super Chikan: He used to work on a farm and feed the chickens every morning. He would toss them their grub and try to figure out what the chickens were talking about. Soon he was talking to them in chicken language, and not too much longer after that he was singing to them in chicken too. Super Chikan--now 48--grew up in the Delta, worked the fields and drove a truck before he started singing for people. (The chickens came much earlier.) He plays left-handed, but always had a right-handed guitar, which gives him a different sound. He played one-string guitars as a kid and today he makes guitars with flattened gas cans he calls "chicantars." Super Chikan, whose real name is James Johnson, is a unique man. You can tell that just by picking up his new CD, Shoot That Thang (Rooster Blues Records). Super Chikan's CD doesn't have liner notes; instead, his story is told in a comic strip drawn by Harvey Pekar, who's garnered some serious fame for his renderings of bluesmen. Listen to the CD and you'll learn more about Super Chikan. In "Mennonite Blues," you'll learn he once drove a tractor for Mennonites--a job that taught him all kinds of things, like how to dress and how to deal with money. Super Chikan's Mennonite wisdom is somethin' you don't hear blues guys talk 'bout much. In "Guilty Man," Super Chikan advises not to tell the truth to a guilty man, "'cause he might try to kill you with his own hands." (That's some news you can use.) Now, as for why Super Chikan's showing up in Doyles-town, turns out they got a blues club there--yep, in Doylestown. And while it's no Mississippi juke joint, the place keeps it real. They showcase big acts, like the Holmes Brothers, Jimmy Johnson and Sweet Daddy Cool Breeze. They got a menu with Southern baked mushrooms (silver dollar mushrooms stuffed with Cajun shrimp and cornbread), Bourbon Street shrimp and St. Louis BBQ ribs. Didn't see no chicken, but then maybe Super Chikan had a little stipulation in his contract, y'know? Now who's gonna miss seein' Super Chikan in the Doylestown house? Just what I thought.
TIM WHITAKER
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REVIEW
Putting a squeeze on the old adage "what's so good about feeling blue," James "Super Chikan" Johnson is one of the most buoyant bluesmen you'll encounter this lifetime or next. A Mississippi farmhand who worked for the Mennonites most of his life, Chikan's tunes are outrageously raw ("Staingy Wid It") and refreshingly festive ("Don't Mess With The Blues") for a late- blooming musician that fashions his guitars out of flattened gas cans (their tinny sound is surprisingly effective). Somehow, you just can't sit still or stay grumpy whenever Chikan's at the mic, giving regards to the full-figured ladies of "Junky Trunk". Given his genial disposition, whimsical verses (his "Mennonite Blues" is as ironic as anything ZZ Top ever spun), and biting, Albert King-like picking ("Tin Top Shack" sports a wonderful double-tracked, wah-wahed solo), Chikan may become one of the blues' finest ambassadors.
AMZ Music Reviewer.com
Clarksdale Musician Creates Unusual Guitars
Blues guitar player, James "Super Chikan" Johnson, has made a name for himself around the North Delta playing the blues with his band. Anyone that has ever seen "Chikan" play his guitar will tell you that he is one bad guitar player - and that means good. However, all of Chikan's fans would be surprised to learn that not only is he a dedicated guitar player, he is also a dedicated inventor and folk artist. Recently, Chikan invented a guitar that is made out of a five gallon military gas can. To add to his "can" guitars, Chikan painted them in interesting ways using his folk art touch. The combined effort is amazing in sound and in look.
"When I was a kid, I experimented with making "bucket guitars" and other things back then," says Chikan. "I finally started making them out of metal gas cans when I got older, thinking that with the hole of the gas can on the end, that all a player would have to do is stick a microphone over the hole and sing at the same time. The microphone would pick up both."
Chikan says that he is in the process of getting a patent for the design and that sales have been good so far.
"I have had a lot of interest," says Chikan who hopes to also sell his guitars over the Internet.
Music and art have been in Chikan's family for some time. Growing up around the Clarksdale area, Chikan was introduced to music at an early age.
"My granddaddy was a fiddler, my uncle Big Jack played guitar and they would all sit around and play music with their friends," says Chikan. "When I was a little boy, I'd sit around and listen to them play. I was never allowed to mess with their guitars, but I was fascinated by all of it. I made my first guitar with a board and a piece of bailing wire - a didley bow is what they called it then."
Chikan says that he learned to play the guitar easily and that he listened to many kinds of music growing up.
"I always liked several kinds of music and that's why my music today sounds so different," says Chikan.
To add a personal touch to his creations, Super Chikan has decorated them with scenes from his Quitman County childhood, as well as a depiction of the Crossroads deal between famous blues player Robert Johnson and the Devil.
The guitars, one of which he made for his uncle "Big Jack Johnson," will be displayed later at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale.
By Robert McFarland, Jr.
CLARKSDALE PRESS REGISTER
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REVIEW
Mississippi Delta man Super Chikan, known to his family as James Johnson, revives his unique style and humor on his latest release, Shoot That Thang, for another round of bluesy back-porch burnin' originals. Armed with handmade Didley Bo's, Gas-Can guitars (chicantars) and of course standard wailing six-stringers, Super Chikan applies some fierce riffs and finger-lickin'-good lyrics to his home-made music, balancing the wholesomeness of true blues with an updated approach to a genre that has withstood the test of musical evolution.
While Super Chikan scratches out his share of 12-bar blues for the purists in the audience, he also shuffles and delves into a bit of boogie-woogie, bending the lines between traditional gut-wrenchin' depresso-tales and gutsy R&B. Even when telling the tale of the blues, Super Chikan puts an ironic twist on it by kicking up a storm about off-kilter topics, like land-leveling with the Mennonites ("Mennonite Blues") or speakin' the truth when you should keep your trap shut ("Guilty Man"). Let's face it: these are situational possibilities than can become real pains in the ass! And even if you don't know what a Mennonite is, Super Chikan entrances you with his hypnotic vocals and greasy guitar licks. Not only is it all very enjoyable, but you could even learn a thing or two from Mr. Johnson if you listen closely enough. Whether he's belting out his words with a hearty, soulful growl or cutting loose a few fast-fingered fret board licks, Super Chikan oozes a genuineness and honed perfection that's only obtained after decades of experience.
Shoot That Thang's polished sound has smoothed out some of the likeable rough edges of Delta blues. Dirty guitar licks have been replaced by slick wah-wah pedals and crisp ringing guitar chords, while beefy bass lines and strolling piano provide for a rich and warm sound. Nonetheless, Johnson's rich sense of humor and silly spontaneity provide for a raucous ride that's one hundred percent legit and a definite musical achievement for his royal Chikan-ness. This is contemporary blues, not another attempt at retro-fitting the blues of 1920. While he retains the essential elements of classic blues, like repetition and plodding bass lines, Super Chikan applies his own traditional influences with a few personal twists and clever lyrics. It's a sound that should immediately come to mind when someone mentions blues in 2001.
Andrew Magilow,
Splendid E-zine Review
REVIEW
James "Super Chikan" Johnson is an all-around Outsider Artist. He makes art objects and musical instruments from found
materials that he adorns with elaborate paint jobs, often involving his totem animal and map scenes - and he's a trucker, too! What he lacks in formal arts training he more than makes up for in zesty originality. As far as the blues go, having Big Jack Johnson as uncle and mentor doesn't hurt. Mix that upbringing with a childhood spent communing with the chickens in his yard and you have a very rare performer. Mostly Chikan sticks to his Chikantar - made from a gas can painted as a road map - on Shoot That Thang (Rooster Blues), though he switches from his homemade ax off to boogie piano on the humorously love struck "Marry Me." His blues blend song with spoken musings, with a slightly free verse edge. Super Chikan says he feels like he is a "lost history book," one that will be discovered sometime down the road as preserving a slice of working life on today's Delta.
Mary Armstrong
PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER.NET
The Living Blues: Past, Present, and Future
Turner, James "Super Chikan" Johnson, "Big" Jack Johnson, "Blind Mississippi" Morris Cummings and Jesse Mae Hemphill are the embodiment of the Blues simply because expressing what was in their hearts came naturally and resulted in the creation of the music.
Othar Turner was born in 1907 and at age 95, is one of the original masters of the Mississippi fife-and-drum tradition. Music from these instruments was carried over from African burial ceremonies and survived through the Civil War and is still being honored, literally, in Turner's backyard. Othar spent much of his adult life as a sharecropper in an area several miles northeast of the Delta region and currently lives by himself on a farm in Gravel Springs, Mississippi. Among the livestock and vegetation he raises and lives off of, Turner grows bamboo cane, a malleable material that produces his medium of melody, the fife.
Turner happened upon the small, flute-like object in an accidental occurrence when, as a teenager, he questioned an older gentleman playing something he had never seen before. Flattered by the young man's curiosity, the elder made Turner a fife on the condition that he learn to play it as well as he. From then on, Othar not only became a master of the instrument, he began to create them from the materials on his own farm. Producing the fife from little more than a piece of bamboo cane is part of the art of the music it makes. One starts with the right type of cane, aged just right and of the proper width. It must then be dried and hollowed out with a piece of iron that had been heated over a fire. The iron is then used to make the holes at the top of the 
fife to create mournful songs from the soul.
James "Super Chikan" Johnson takes the Blues from heartrending to playful with his colorful shows, dazzling folk art, and unique persona. Super Chikan was 19 years old when he started making music. His nickname was a result of chasing chickens on the plantation, talking to them, and reporting back to everyone what they were saying to him.
Super Chikan's Blues came during his earliest experiments with a musical instrument, "The Diddly-Bow." While playing the wire object attached to a barn, a well dressed man approached him offering to make him rich if Johnson would play the diddly-bow in Washington. To his dismay, Super Chikan could not think of a way to get a barn across any distance so he had to settle for staying home to sing about the feelings of disappointment this created in regards to his plans for getting rich. He also found solace in creating vibrantly colorful guitars out of gas cans.
With creativity and music in his blood - his uncle is "Big" Jack Johnson - Super Chikan has made a life of his art. The adolescent with a 2-string guitar grew into a man who developed his own style while playing juke joints with his uncle Big Jack. In reflection, Super Chikan discusses the simplicity with which he arrived at his unique abilities by shrugging them off as, "...seeing how far a po' boy [could] get being himself."
"Big" Jack Johnson was born in Lambert, Mississippi - where he still lives - to a father who was a local musician in Blues and Country music clubs. Despite genetic influence, Big Jack had natural ability that often took over him when he played, making it harder for him to ever imitate anything he created. During these spells, Johnson would often have physical reactions so powerful they would bring tears to his eyes.
Although Big Jack had a connection with the Blues, in his youth he received opposition from his mother when he expressed interest in music. He would sing and play his guitar along with Country singers like Gene Autry, Hank Snow, and Hank Williams only to have his mother scold him into turning it off. She would insist that since he could not sing or play as well as the White stars he imitated, he would not be allowed to try. Big Jack had only to yodel for his mom once and he never heard her complain again.
Johnson was such a dynamic musician, he expected the same perfection in anyone he shared the staged with, including his young nephew and prodigy, Super Chikan. After having followed the lead of the legendary B.B. King at the age of 18, it was no wonder his standards had sky rocketed. For over 30 years, with three different band names, he found equal counterparts in bluesmen Sam Carr and Frank Frost and traveled with them as the most-recognized "Jelly Roll Kings."
Like most Blues musicians, however, Big Jack Johnson felt his music was never as appreciated in the States as it was in Europe. In the South, the Blues is a way of life; you hear it at home, in church, and sung by friends and family. Overseas, Johnson received greater appreciation because he was offering something different - music with a life of its own. As described by Big Jack, "They just love me, the way I do...Blues with a feeling."
"Blind Mississippi Morris" Cummings lost his sight at a child, so for him, Blues was more than a feeling; it was instinctual. Like many of his contemporaries, his abilities are all self taught and any other talent was genetically inherited. Morris, who is considered one of the finest harmonica players in the world, is the cousin of members of the Mississippi Sheiks, the nephew of Mary Tanner, who played with the Harps of Melody, and the cousin of blues great, Willie Dixon.
Jessie Mae Hemphill has been like family to Morris as they have known each other for many years. Some of their earliest memories include songs they sung in the cotton fields. Hemphill also had music in her blood; her grandfather, Sid Hemphill, would write and play with Jessie sitting right at his knee. Never a shy child, she would sing along with him and knew she was destined to be a performer as well. Jessie Mae's biggest ambition was to make a record of her music. At that time, Blacks weren't even allowed to share bathrooms, dining areas, and water fountains, let alone make any kind of a mark in a predominantly White industry like Country/Blues music. After being recognized as a unique singer/guitarist, however, Jessie Mae was finally able to make her records: "She Wolf" in 1981 and "Feelin' Good" in 1987.
Shortly thereafter, Jessie Mae Hemphill had a stroke that ended her recording career. What little strength left in her voice, she devotes to singing her praises to her spiritual guide, GOD.
TURNER SOUTH
Republication of the first album of odd Super Chikan (super chicken!) left in 1997, chanteur/guitariste/harmonicist of Mississippi and nephew of Big Johnson Jack.
A surprising album, an unclassable music, an atmosphere of strangest which makes Super Chikan the bluesman of atypical Mississippi of these last years. For lack of reference mark, the listener could be décontenancé with the first listening, because its musical universe, synthesis of rural blues, country, soul, funk, even pop is not more accessible.
More than its compositions, however of an originality surprising, it is the sound, bourdonnant, with significant use of the reverberation, and low omnipresent supporting at it-only a sometimes wobbly building, which makes the characteristic of Super Chikan.
Singer with the voice suave, nonchalant, guitarist with the confluence of the Delta and Chicago blues, his personality asserts himself largely on the funk blues Super Chikan strut , Captain coils juice , of a disarming simplicity and a groove, on the piece Crystal ball eyes with the accrocheuse melody, the slow blues Bleeding from the heart , Mr. rich man between blues and country, light Camel toe , Rockin' lorgnant towards the pop music, the Mama countryman & the chillen (share 1 & 2) , and on moist What it is . So certain pieces are of an extreme monotony (plage1, 2, 9, 13, 14), this republication will make it possible to the more skeptics to form a true opinion about this singular musician, who recorded this year even a new album in a similar vein.
An album which inevitably will not be able to like everyone, but which largely deserves listening; then do not hesitate, dare to make the first in this world where the chicken is a king!
www. Strata.com
(Translated from French)
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