“Someday I’ll Play with Muddy Waters:”

An Interview with Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson

Of all the blues guitarists named Luther, perhaps the most recognized is Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson. Born in Mississippi in 1939, and raised in Greenwood, Johnson moved to Chicago, and then New Hampshire and now lives in the sunshine State of Florida, leaving a spectacular trail of blues gigs and recordings in his wake. As a child, he sang lead in the church choir, and after listening to his mother’s records of the Muddy Waters Band, Johnson made his own three-string guitar. “I wanted to play the blues” he confessed to me “and that was the only way I could do it.”

He explained, “Back in those days, you had to go to church with your Mom and father but what happened was — I was in the choir, you know, I was leading the choir at the church and every time my mother and my sister — they were singing behind me — but when I would go home on Sunday, my mother would need to go out, and I would have the kids be around me and I would playing the blues when she had left the house.”

When Johnson was twelve or thirteen, Johnson got his first real guitar. His mother bought him a “Stella” brand guitar, and he told her that one day he would play with Muddy Waters. That statement proved prophetic. At eighteen, Johnson moved to…