R.I.P. Syl Johnson (1 Jul 1936 - 6 Feb 2022)

Good Lord, yet another sad loss this year to the world of soul music. Syl Johnson aka Sylvester Thompson died yesterday aged 85. The news was passed to me by Gary Van Den Bussche who played his "Is It Because I'm Black" only last week on his radio show.

He was born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago in the 50s where he began singing the blues with Magic Sam and released his first solo single in 1959.

His first charting single came in 1967 with "Come Sock It To Me" followed by the much sampled  "Different Strokes" (reissued only last year by Numero Group and posted HERE).

He had seven R&B chart entries on Twilight (later renamed Twinight) before joining Willie Mitchell's Hi label in 1972 and continued with another ten R&B hits and recorded four albums for Hi as well as two on Twilight.

However, before signing to Chicago's Twilight label, he had recorded around ten singles between 1959-1967 including one that has been played on Northern Soul dancefloors for many, many years "Do You Know What Love Is" in 1966 which is one of only four listed singles on Monk Higgins' Special Agent label. It was released twice as the first two releases on the label with different B sides.

His biggest chart success came in 1975 with the first cover of Al Green's "Take Me To The River" reaching #48 Hot 100 and #12 R&B which also had a great ballad "Could I Be Falling In Love" on the flip.

In the 80s he released a few albums on his own Shama label with the title track of the second "Ms Fine Brown Frame" being his last hit in 1982 and then went into semi-retirement but made a comeback in the 90s after learning that "Different Strokes" had been sampled my many hip-hop artists.

There is an excellent 6 x LP or 4 x CD compilation from Numero Group from 2010 "The Complete Mythology". A 2015 documentary, Sly Johnson: Any Way The Wind Blows, has been made available online for the first time today on Vimeo.

It also transpires that his older brother, blues singer/guitarist Jimmy Johnson, died on 31 Jan 2022 aged 93. They recorded an album together in 2001 "Two Johnsons Are Better Than One". Deepest sympathies to the Johnson (Thompson) family at this very sad time.

As a tribute I've selected some of his best recordings from 60s-80s in playlist below and included a YouTube clip of his version of Nate Evans (Impressions) "Main Squeeze", a non-album track  which isn't on Spotify.