Syl Johnson

Syl Johnson combined exuberant vocals with accomplished harmonica work, allowing his blues-rooted soul to earn solid chart traction across the 1960s and 1970s before his brisk, festive sides resurfaced through later crate-diggers. He notched successes such as the 1967 single “Different Strokes” and the 1969 socially conscious statement “Is It Because I’m Black?,” yet stepped away from recording by the mid-1980s to concentrate on real-estate holdings and a restaurant chain. As hip-hop producers began lifting passages from those same sides, a new audience sought the source material, prompting Johnson’s mid-1990s return to both studio and stage. Anthology sets and a documentary film followed, coinciding with fresh releases that included 1999’s Talkin’ Bout Chicago and the 2002 sibling project Two Johnsons Are Better Than One.

Born Sylvester Thompson in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1936, he moved with his family to Chicago in the early 1950s. Brother to bassist Mac Thompson and guitarist/vocalist Jimmy Johnson, Syl performed alongside Magic Sam, Billy Boy Arnold, and Junior Wells during the 1950s, then cut sessions with Jimmy Reed for Vee-Jay in 1959 before issuing his own debut on Federal the same year. He spent late 1959 through 1962 on the road with Howlin’ Wolf until Willie Mitchell placed him on Hi Records. Working for both Twilight and Hi in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Johnson registered the dance novelty “Come on Sock It to Me” and the pointed “Is It Because I’m Black?,” then reached his commercial peak when “Take Me to the River” climbed to number seven on the R&B chart in 1975. Further beat-driven albums appeared, among them 1975’s Total Explosion and 1979’s Uptown Shakedown, before he largely withdrew from music in the early 1980s. Renewed exposure arrived once Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan, Geto Boys, and others incorporated his drum breaks and other elements, spurring Numero Group’s 2010 anthology Complete Mythology and the 2015 documentary Any Way the Wind Blows. Johnson died on February 6, 2022, at age 85, six days after his brother Jimmy Johnson.