Jim Newsom
Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2007
Was there an
actual girl with such measurements who inspired that 1960s Beach
Music classic?
"I was only about 14
years old when I wrote that song," General Norman Johnson
laughed when he called me last weekend from Myrtle Beach. "I
don’t know—maybe it rhymed with ‘ape-itty ape.’ That came from a
young teenager’s brain!"
Johnson, who comes back
to his hometown this week to be inducted into the Legends of
Music Walk of Fame, has been singing since he was a youngster
living at 852 Washington Avenue in the Huntersville section of
Norfolk.
"I started when I was
about 6 years old," he said, "singing in churches and stuff. We
formed our first little neighborhood group called The
Humdingers. Our first professional job where we got paid a
little bit of money was with Ruth Brown in a place called Chowan
Beach.
"Noah Biggs from
Norfolk put some money behind The Humdingers. He was our
manager, and he took us down to New Orleans to record our first
records—which had ‘It Will Stand’ and ‘39-21-40 Shape.’ The
people at Minit Records said ‘no’ to the name Humdingers, so we
had to come up with a name right on the spot. We came up with
The Showmen there in New Orleans."
"It Will Stand" was a
national hit for The Showmen, but around here it was "39-21-40
Shape," mislabeled "39-21-46" on the 45-rpm record, that really
took off.
"Most people say they
printed the label wrong," he explained, "but I think they did it
as a ploy because it was more commercial, it aroused curiosity.
Actually, when I wrote the song it was called ‘You.’ And ‘It
Will Stand’ was ‘Rock and Roll Will Stand.’ So they just changed
the names of the songs."
Johnson has one of the
great voices of rock and soul, an instantly recognizable sound
that wraps itself around a lyric and pulls every ounce of
emotion out.
"You know what’s so
funny?" he asked. "Up until the age of about 14, I sung the
range of female alto. I went out at lunch one day at school, and
I started coughing. I thought I had laryngitis. My voice changed
and this is what I ended up with. And I thought, what am I gonna
do?"
He is also a successful
songwriter. When The Showmen split in 1968, he moved to Detroit
where he formed The Chairmen of the Board. It was there
that he hit his songwriting stride, writing lyrics that were
simple yet poetic.
"I’ve always aimed for
simplicity," he said. "I’ve always aimed for things that people
could understand. A title that awakened the imagination like one
I did for the Honey Cone, ‘Want Ads:’ ‘Wanted, young man single
and free/Experience in love preferred but we’ll accept a young
trainee.’ I mean everybody can understand what you’re saying.
"In Detroit they better
be great lines! My bosses were Holland-Dozier-Holland, and you
can’t even begin to count their successes. But I learned from
them real good. They had just left Motown and were in a lawsuit,
and I was stuck up there in the middle of that. But I was
learning from them the art of how you write a song. It paid off,
because in a year and a half I had amassed six million-selling
songs that I had written. I got the Grammy for ‘Patches,’ I was
the BMI Songwriter of the Year. That’s pretty heavy stuff."
The Chairmen of the
Board had several huge hits with Johnson’s compositions in
the early ’70s, most notably "Give Me Just a Little More Time"
and "(You’ve Got Me) Dangling on a String." Hit versions of his
songs like Freda Payne’s "Bring the Boys Home," "Somebody’s Been
Sleeping" by 100 Proof (Aged in Soul), and the string of hits
for label mates Honey Cone proved his mettle as a songwriter.
But it is "Patches," a #2 smash for Clarence Carter in 1970,
that remains his most recorded song.
"That came from
imagination," he replied when I asked about the genesis of the
song. "You put yourself in another person’s shoes, but at the
same time I wanted to put it in a setting that everybody could
understand. It’s a little bit about me, but I try my best not to
write a song exclusively about me. I try to write a song that
touches the emotions of everyone. And ‘Patches’ was that kind of
song. I’m not born and raised in Alabama, but that made for a
better song than being born and raised in Huntersville!"
He credits his father,
whose name was General Johnson, for his career in music.
"I owe it all to my
father," he said, then laughed, "Every slap beside the head for
hitting a flat note! My father is the one who taught me how to
sing, and I was singing on the radio and singing in churches
from Norfolk to New York City.
"He was working over at
the Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth. He wanted to be a singer, he
was singing with a spiritual group. But that could not be a
career because he had a family. So I think he lived through me."
Though he was born
General Norman Johnson, he was called Norman when he was
growing up. A record company executive changed that.
"I was working at a
record company called Swan Records in Philadelphia," he
remembered. "The owner of the company, a big Italian guy, said,
‘General is your name and furthermore, General is more
marketable.’
"It was the kind of
name that you don’t want to use in school. I absolutely hated
that name. That just goes to show you—I hated my name, and my
name turns out to be marketable. I hated the way my voice had
changed, and my voice has been said to be one of the most
distinctive. You never know when you’re being given a blessing."
For the last 30 years,
General Norman Johnson has been one of the biggest names
in Beach Music. But when he first moved down to his current home
base, Charlotte, he didn’t know what "Beach Music" was.
"Later on," he said, "I
found out that way back when, black music was known as ‘blue
music,’ and it was forbidden fruit for the Caucasian race. It
was no different from when they couldn’t listen to Little
Richard sing ‘Tutti Frutti’ but Pat Boone could sing it. Those
people that wanted to hear the authentic sound could go down to
Myrtle Beach to those jukeboxes and they could listen to rhythm
& blues music. So that’s how it got the name as being ‘Beach
Music.’
"It’s been a blessing
for me because during the time of disco and all the different
changes in music, I didn’t have to worry because I had a vast
audience that loved the music that I loved to do. If you’re
looking for melody and a strong song structure, where the singer
is still the main focal point, then you’re talking about the
music that I love to do."
