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Johnnie Bassett is a legendary Detroit blues guitarist and singer, renowned by the All Music Guide for “a unique ability to combine jump blues and Delta stylings.”

That style and sound is the result of a long and rich lifetime of musical experiences. Born in Florida, where his father was a bootlegger during prohibition, Johnnie was surrounded by music. His mother, sisters and aunts took him to church and surrounded him with gospel spirituals. But in the summer he’d head out to his grandmother’s famous fish fries, where the likes of Tampa Red, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Lonnie Johnson and others would set up and play while folks ate and danced.

“They were my dad’s friends,” Bassett recalls. “He would meet them on the road. I didn’t know they were gonna be big names ’til I got to be a teenager and we moved to Michigan. I’d hear them on records when I was 13, 14, 15 years old and go, ‘Hey, these are the same people I heard play when I was just a little kid.’ And Dad said, ‘Yeah, that’s them.’”

Johnnie started playing guitar himself at that time, “framming around” on an old arched-top instrument of his sister’s and taking informal lessons from a neighbor on the front porch at night. “One day he let me take his guitar home, which was just next door,” Bassett remembers. “I’d work at it for three, four hours at a time. That was the start. I just fell in love with it.”

An older brother bought Johnnie an electric guitar and small amplifier from a pawn shop, and he never looked back. He met Uncle Jessie White at a record store on Detroit’s Hastings Street and started playing with him. He formed the Bluenotes with keyboardist Joe Weaver, which led to gigs with John Lee Hooker, Big Joe Turner, Ruth Brown and Eddie Burns and a tenure as the house band for Detroit’s Fortune Records label. Bassett and company also spent a bit of time at Chess Records in Chicago and played on the first sessions by The Miracles, which resulted in the single “Got a Job.”

“It was fun, just fun — that’s all we were having,” Johnnie recalls. “They didn’t ever pay us. They sent out and got some lunch meat and some crackers and some pop, fed us some lunch, and we went right to playing.” He notes with a laugh that “They still owe us for that session!”

A stint in the army sent Bassett to Seattle during the late ‘50s, where he remained for a bit and played around the local scene — including jamming with a “talented” young Jimi Hendrix. By the end of the ‘60s he was back in Detroit, working a series of day jobs — from dispatching cabs to the requisite auto factory position — but never putting down the guitar as he continued to lead his band, the Blues Insurgents.

He recorded a series of excellent albums such as I Gave My Life To The Blues, Bassett Hound, Cadillac Blues (nominated for five W.C. Handy Awards) and Party My Blues Away. He kept working and eventually became a hometown legend and treasure, receiving a well deserved Lifetime Achievement Award from the Detroit Blues Society in 1994. His new album, The Gentleman Is Back, finds Johnnie, at 72, in prime form as a player and singer.

Johnnie Bassett – EPK from Mack Avenue on Vimeo.

“I just love to play,” Johnnie says. “People come out and enjoy it and the guys I’m playing with are enjoying it and having fun with it. As long as that’s happening, I’ll keep on doing it.”

The Blues Insurgents include Keith Kaminski on saxophone, Chris Codish on keyboards, James Simonson on bass, and Skeeto Valdez on drums.

Johnnie Bassett website