Complete mythology

"l Johnson is - there's no other way to put it - an also-ran. A very good singer, a pretty good guitar player, a fine songwriter, a canny reader of the zeitgeist, he was a fixture on the Chicago soul scene on and off for decades. He made the R&B charts 19 times over the years, but never really broke through to a pop audience. His records are mostly out of print, his big numbers all but forgotten-- although he did apparently make a killing from all the hip-hop records that sampled Morris Jennings' breakbeat and Minnie Riperton's giggle from his 1967 single "Different Strokes".So the Numero Group's comprehensive box set of Johnson's 1959-1971 material is a labor of love - four CDs, packaged with six LPs of the same material and an extensive booklet, drawn from releases on half dozen or so labels and encompassing a bit of unreleased material, too. This isn't even the full career survey its title implies; more than half of his 19 R&B hits happened after the period documentedhere,the bulk of them on Hi Records, where he was effectively the second-tier Al Green. (His only Top-10 R&B hit was a cover of Green's "Take Me to the River".) It's a tribute to a local guy who really made good only long after the fact".

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"A spectacular 81-track, four-disc box set of the blues-steeped singer's recordings from 1959 to 77. Johnson described himself as, "More soul than Marvin, more funk than James. If I'd gone pop, you'd be talkin' about me, not them!" Never one for bashfulness, Johnson was pivotal in soul's development. There at the beginning with Federal singles such as 1959's doo-wop-tinged Teardrops and 1962's rockin' R&B number Little Sally Walker, he quickly emerged as a powerful soul shouter with a Southern clout (see the scolding Wilson Pickett-esque Half A Love), capable of bold funk (the heavily sampled Different Strokes) and social comment (the mournful Is It Because I'm Black, the plaintive Concrete Reservation). Almost perfect, the only quibble is Complete Mythology's omission of Syl's Hi label material".

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