Syl Johnson — whose legacy includes stints as a West Side blues guitarist in the ’50s and a prime purveyor of hard-driving soul in the ’60s and ’70s — is on a mission. “If I hear one more story about how I did this with Junior Wells and did that with Magic Sam I’m gonna scream,” he says with a laugh. “I got some new stuff to talk to you about.”
The “new stuff” amounts to nothing less than a career renaissance for a singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer who gave up on the music business in the early ’80s when first disco and then hip-hop made his sound commercially obsolete.
Johnson set up a chain of fast-food fish restaurants around the country and forgot about making music. Then the business that shunned him came calling. Bits of his ’60s and ’70s classics such as “Different Strokes” were sampled on numerous hip-hop and R&B records, including seven tracks on the most recent Wu-Tang Clan album, “Wu-Tang Forever,” a 1997 hit.
“I’m the king of the samples,” he crows. “James Brown, Bootsy Collins, George Clinton — they got nothing on me.”
Johnson says he received $50,000 from Wu-Tang for each of the seven samples on their disc, and his music has also been sampled by TLC, En Vogue, Raekwon, Hammer and the Geto Boyz, among others.
“I got my retirement all set,” says the singer, 62.
But Johnson isn’t thinking about retiring just yet. In 1995, his “Back in the Game” album (Delmark) reunited him with the vaunted Memphis-based Hi Rhythm section, with whom he recorded a string of hits in the ’70s. Johnson’s 19-year-old daughter Syleena made her singing debut on that disc, and she returns to sing a duet with Dad on his latest release, “Bridge to a Legacy” (Antone’s), out this week. “Bridge” also pairs him with another talented youngster, teenage blues guitarist Jonny Lang, on the track “I Been Missin’ U.”
“I met him when I played one of my first gigs after `Back in the Game’ came out in 1995,” Johnson says. “He opened for me in Minneapolis and I met his whole family. They fell in love with me — I never knew that white folks could be so wonderful.”
Johnson punctuates the latter remark with a laugh, but there’s a kernel of truth. One of his classic sides from the ’60s is “Is It Because I’m Black?,” which conveys the desperation of being a minority in a racist society: “I wanna be somebody so bad . . . but ya keep on puttin’ your foot on me.” Like many artists of his generation, Johnson scored a number of hits but is not collecting royalties on many of them because of exploitive business practices by label owners.
Johnson once was known as Syl Thompson, an aspiring blues guitarist from Holly Springs, Miss., who wound up in Chicago playing behind everyone from Junior Wells to Jimmy Reed in the 1950s. His late brother Mac Thompson was bassist for Chicago blues great Magic Sam, a neighbor.
Then, in 1959, Syl Thompson cut a few songs for Syd Nathan’s Cincinnati-based Federal label. One was released as a single, only it came out under the name Syl Johnson.
“Syd Nathan didn’t like the name `Thompson,’ ” Johnson says. “He said, `Johnson is a more popular name for a black artist.’ I thought it was a mistake when I saw the record, but when I heard (Chicago deejay) Pervis Spann play it on his radio show, I said, `I’m Syl Johnson now!’ “
Johnson didn’t score a hit until 1967, however, with “Come On Sock It to Me.” It was only then, Johnson says, that he realized he was a singer. “I was a guitar player and I never sang in church and never thought much of my voice,” he says. “What I had was a sound that was bluesy, but not blues, because I didn’t play that 12-bar stuff. It was funky soul music, and people loved it.”
With his keening tenor cutting across horn-flecked arrangements, Johnson reeled off a string of gritty singles, hitting his commercial peak with a cover of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” in 1975.
Two decades later, he’s looking to rekindle some of that artistic fire. His voice remains in impressive condition. “I was never a drinker, a smoker or a joker,” Johnson cracks. “If anything, I’m a better singer now because I’m more polished, more precise.”
A few weeks ago, he ended up on stage with an admirer, Bonnie Raitt, at the Rosemont Theatre. Raitt once covered Johnson’s “About to Make Me Leave Home” and she planned to perform it that night. Her manager called him at 5 p.m. asking if he’d duet with Raitt a few hours later.
“I had a splitting migraine headache but I got myself together and showed up at the theater,” he says. “It had been so long since I performed the song that I had to write the words down — I got about a verse on paper when she’s calling me up to sing. She’s saying, `It may not be in his key,’ and I didn’t want to hog her spotlight. So I ran on, sang a few lines and ran off. She’s a superstar, and now she tells me she wants to work with me, get some of my songs on her next album. Things could not be better.”
Johnson headlines Aug. 23 at Buddy Guy’s Legends.
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