Johnnie & Jack

Johnnie & Jack explored the well-trodden territory of brother-style harmony acts from the late 1940s into the late 1950s, yet introduced several distinctive departures. They were not siblings by blood but only through marriage. They also injected fresh rhythmic energy into country music through Latin-inflected rhythms and the unrestrained momentum of their backing group, the Tennessee Mountain Boys. Among all such vocal pairs they proved the most willing to expand their stylistic range, moving from bluegrass into gospel and into striking renditions of R&B material without any loss of country feeling. At the same time, few performers even during the mid-1950s remained as thoroughly devoted to a purely “country” identity. Regardless of the material they performed, composed, or recorded, the result always bore the unmistakable stamp of Johnnie & Jack.

Johnnie Wright and Jack Anglin first joined forces in 1938, assembling an informal country string band that included Johnnie’s recently married wife Muriel Deason, later rechristened Kitty Wells. Their early approach drew heavily on both the Delmore Brothers and the Monroe Brothers, Charlie and Bill. As Johnnie later observed, “We were so green we didn’t know you needed to develop your own style. We just out and out copied their sound in the beginning.” A key participant was Jack’s brother Jim Anglin, whose high, lonesome tenor supplied harmony both onstage and in the studio while also supplying many of the songs that shaped the duo’s twenty-five-year association.

Just as the Tennessee Hillbillies, as the band was then called, began climbing the country ranks through regular radio broadcasts, World War II interrupted their progress when Jack entered the Army. After the war, with Kitty now a steady member, Johnnie & Jack resumed their climb, bringing aboard emcee and bassist Smilin’ Eddie Hill plus a young guitarist named Chet Atkins. In 1947 they substituted for Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry, though officials required them to drop “hillbilly” from their name and become the Tennessee Mountain Boys while barring Kitty from the broadcasts because the show already featured too many female singers.

By the close of that year they had cut their first sides for the New York R&B label Apollo Records. Those initial 78s met with little response—the label declined to supply promotional copies to stations—and a brief detour with Ray Atkins and Clyde Moody as the King Sacred Quartette on the King imprint followed. In 1949 the duo began their longest association, recording for RCA Victor. Even with Kitty contributing solo work and high baritone parts to the duo’s discs, commercial breakthrough remained out of reach for several more years. The group shuttled between stations, appearing on the Louisiana Hayride and outlets in Georgia and North Carolina. Everything shifted with the 1951 release of their first hit, “Poison Love,” which reached the Top Ten on all three Billboard country charts then in use. The breakthrough came from grafting their bluegrass harmonies onto a pronounced rhumba rhythm, chiefly supplied by studio bassist Ernie Newton, who simultaneously played maracas and wire brushes. In an era when the Grand Ole Opry still banned drums and accepted electric instruments only grudgingly, the approach proved both novel and influential. The duo returned to the formula on later recordings, often adding cha-cha codas that became another signature.

Once Kitty scored her landmark success with “It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” the trio of Johnnie & Jack and Kitty became one of country’s busiest touring packages. Within a few years their sound shifted again when they added Jordanaires bass singer Culley Holt to give a country treatment to several R&B numbers, among them the Moonglows’ “Sincerely,” the Four Knights’ “(Oh Baby Mine) I Get So Lonely,” the Delta Rhythm Boys’ “Kiss Crazy Baby,” and the Spaniels’ “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight.” Each became a country hit, helping the pair weather the arrival of rock & roll more successfully than most contemporaries while preserving the core of their style. Altogether Johnnie & Jack placed fifteen singles on the Billboard country charts, a figure that likely would have been higher had the mid-1950s listings extended beyond the Top Ten.

By the late 1950s, however, their RCA sessions were being recast in the smoother Nashville Sound, with the Jordanaires, the Anita Kerr Singers, saxophones, and expanded rhythm sections enveloping their harmonies in reverb and pop gloss. Unhappy with the direction, the duo allowed their contract to lapse and moved to Decca Records in 1961. The new label altered the spelling of their name to “Johnny & Jack,” yet the arrangement at last placed the duo and Kitty on the same roster alongside Patsy Cline, Ernest Tubb, Webb Pierce, Red Foley, and Bill Monroe. No further hits materialized, but Kitty’s ongoing success kept the act in steady demand on the road. Returning from one such trip, they received news of the plane crash that claimed Patsy Cline, her manager Randy Hughes, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Cowboy Copas. While driving to the funeral home, Jack Anglin lost control of his car and was killed instantly, bringing the partnership of Johnnie & Jack to a tragic close.