Johnny Young

Although the mandolin rarely figures in Chicago blues, the instrument appeared on recordings made in that city and within local string-band circles featuring Carl Martin, Charles and Joe McCoy, and Yank Rachell. Mississippi-born bluesman Johnny Young alone carried the instrument successfully into the electric blues era that followed.

A pivotal presence in the genre’s development, Young remained devoted to the vigorous string-band customs of the Delta, traditions that comfortably overlapped with blues itself. His landmark 1947 Chicago release, “Money Taking Women,” captures that same buoyant rural energy by blending blues with longstanding country breakdown forms. Such ensemble textures also lent themselves to outdoor playing, whether on Memphis streets or at Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market, where Young and fellow musicians were recruited directly from public spaces for recording sessions. As Chicago’s African-American listeners increasingly favored a polished urban approach, Young’s mandolin work gradually receded, yet his command of guitar and his expressive singing allowed him to adapt without difficulty.

By the late ’60s a growing white blues-revival public embraced his mandolin technique. In contrast to Yank Rachell, whose playing preserved an earlier string-band character, Young anchored his approach in the postwar blues language and collaborated fluidly with electric-blues performers. Across his career he partnered with such central figures as Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Walter Horton, and Otis Spann. He maintained that music was his destined path. In an interview given not long before his death, he recalled lifelong efforts to succeed in the business and expressed a heartfelt wish to earn enough for a house; that goal remained unmet.