Big Jack Johnson born 30 July 1941

Big Jack Johnson (July 30, 1940* – March 14, 2011) was an American electric blues musician, one of the "present-day exponents of an edgier, electrified version of the raw, uncut Delta blues sound." He was one of a small number of blues musicians who played the mandolin. He won a W. C. Handy Award in 2003 for best acoustic blues album. 

Jack N. Johnson was born in Lambert, Mississippi, in 1940, one of 18 children in his family. His father, Ellis Johnson, was a sharecropper, and his family picked cotton, but he was also a working musician, leading a band at local functions and playing fiddle and mandolin in country and blues styles. Big Jack got his start in music playing with his father. In his teens, he began playing the electric guitar, attracted to the urban sound of B.B. King. Johnson was nicknamed "The Oil Man", because of his day job as a truck driver for Shell Oil. He was the father of 13 children. 

His earliest professional playing, apart from his father's band, was with Earnest Roy, Sr., C. V. Veal & the Shufflers, and Johnny Dugan & the Esquires. In 1962, Johnson, Sam Carr and Frank Frost formed the Jelly Roll Kings and the Nighthawks, in which Johnson played bass, releasing two albums, Hey Boss Man (1962) and My Back Scratcher (1966). The group eventually broke up, but in 1978 the president of Earwig Records persuaded them to re-form and they cut an album for Earwig, "Rockin' the Juke Joint Down". The album was a critical and financial success, and the group--now calling themselves The Jelly Roll Kings--began touring, notably in Europe. With Frost as the bandleader, they performed and recorded together for 15 years. 

Since the mid-80s, however, Johnston had a career of his own as an energetic, old-fashioned blues singer, sharing the values as well as the background of contemporaries such as Magic Slim. Nonetheless, like most blues musicians, he was unable to make a living from music alone, and relied on the steady income of a day job, delivering heating oil to customers in and around Clarksdale, Mississippi. 

                              

Johnson's first solo album, The Oil Man, including the song "Catfish Blues", was released by Earwig in 1987. He recorded solo and as a member of the Jelly Roll Kings and Big Jack Johnson and the Oilers (with the poet and musician Dick Lourie).  He wrote and performed "Jack's Blues" and performed "Catfish Medley" with Samuel L. Jackson on the soundtrack of the film Black Snake Moan. His album Daddy, When Is Mama Comin Home? (1990) presents social concerns. The power of Johnson’s live performances with his own bands are also captured in the 1993 documentary Deep Blues and the concert video Juke Joint Saturday Night: Live from Margaret's Blue Diamond Lounge. 

Among further albums were a vivid Live in Chicago, for Earwig, and four for MC Records. In these Johnson revealed other facets, such as a taste for country music, which he had enjoyed since he was a boy. He also joined the small body of blues musicians who play the mandolin. The Memphis Barbecue Sessions (2002), a warm collaboration with the harmonica player Kim Wilson and the pianist Pinetop Perkins, won a WC Handy award in 2003 for best acoustic blues album. By 2004, Jack has performed over 300 shows a year worldwide, for the last three years, a true testament to his fiery intensity and crowd pleasing live show. 

He released his last two albums, Juke Joint Saturday Night (2007) and Katrina (2008), himself. He performed and recorded with his band, the Cornlickers, with Dale Wise on drums, Dave Groninger on guitar, Tony Ryder on bass, and Bobby Gentilo on guitar. They recorded his last album Big Jack's Way during 2010. 

Johnson died from an undisclosed illness at a hospital in his hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi on March 14, 2011. According to family members, he had struggled with health problems in his final years, worsening to the point that there were erroneous reports of his death in the days leading up to it. 

Johnson was posthumously honoured with a plaque on the Clarksdale Walk of Fame in August 2011. He also has a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Clarksdale. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, The Guardian, IMDb & AllMusic) (* one source gives birth year as 1939)