An Introduction to Jesse Johnson — #PrinceCelebration2019
Here we are in February 2019, just two months away from the Celebration 2019 at Paisley Park! If you’ve read our previous blog post you’ll be aware that Jesse Johnson is headlining, and that we here at The Violet Reality are very happy about this! That being said, we’re aware that not all fans know of the depth and breadth of Jesse’s career, and his incredible work both alongside Prince, and on his own, as a pioneer of the Minneapolis Sound. So let us break it down for you as we tell you why Jesse is a force of nature!
Although Jesse is a songwriter, vocalist, producer and multi-instrumentalist, he first found success as the guitar player in The Time, the legendary funk group formed by Prince in 1980. Many members of The Time have gone on to be incredibly successful in their own right (most notably Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, who are among the most successful music producers and songwriters of all time) but in those early days, The Time’s music was an outlet for Prince to release harder funk songs that he was unable to release under his own name, such as Get It Up and 777–9311.
Now, if you’re going to be playing songs that Prince wrote live, then you have to be as good as Prince. In fact, Prince wanted both The Time and The Revolution to sound “even better than the record” when it came to live performances. In actual fact, much has been written and spoken about over the years to suggest that there were occasions when The Time as the opening act, upstaged Prince and his band due to being so tight, to the point where Prince would get upset about it and sometimes retaliate by pulling them off certain stops on the tour so they wouldn’t be able to play at all. As a noted guitar player, just like Prince, a lot of that responsibility would come down to Jesse. For an example of Jesse ripping an absolutely monstrous guitar solo, skip to 8m18s in this video to hear him performing the solo from 777–9311.
With skills like that, it’s no wonder Prince got nervous. Although there was often tension, Prince and Jesse had a close friendship and fruitful working relationship, with Jesse playing guitar, bass and keyboards on Vanity 6’s Bite The Beat. A little later on, Jesse wrote a song and took the music to Prince to see what he thought. If you’ve seen Purple Rain, it’s a song you definitely know, but you might not have known that it is Jesse’s music. I’m talking about a song that would become one of The Time’s biggest hits — Jungle Love.
Jesse was kind enough to share his original Jungle Love demo a few years back, and it’s ended up on YouTube. As you can hear, it’s virtually identical in composition to the final version.
By the time Purple Rain was being filmed, The Time as a band were already fraught with tension. New members (including Mark Cardenas and Paul Peterson) had been brought in after Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis had been fired for producing outside acts against Prince’s will and missing a show as a result, and Morris Day was growing ever more frustrated at the lack of control. Although they just about managed to hold things together enough to film the movie, as a band they broke up after the filming wrapped. It’s been said in some places that there was a suggestion floated at one point that the band continue with Jesse replacing Morris as the frontman, but that didn’t materialise.
As Morris moved to Los Angeles to capitalise on his new-found Hollywood fame (some reviews suggested that Morris, not Prince, inadvertently became the real star of Purple Rain due to his charismatic on-screen presence), Jesse took the opportunity to work with Prince’s original manager, Owen Husney, and sign a solo recording deal with A&M Records. His debut solo album, Jesse Johnson’s Revue followed in 1985, and is a staple album of the Minneapolis Sound. It generated three singles, Be Your Man, I Want My Girl, and my personal favourite song from that album, Can You Help Me.
A&M Records also had another artist on their label who they really wanted to push around that time. A member of the most famous musical family of all time, but who had yet to score a hit in her own right. The label paired her and Jesse together, and thus Jesse became the first member of The Time to produce for Janet Jackson with the songs Fast Girls and Pretty Boy. Yes, before Janet was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, she was produced by Jesse!
As if that wasn’t enough, Jesse also produced the debut album by the band Ta Mara & The Seen in 1985, generating the hit single Everybody Dance. It’s both an iconic Jesse production and a track that would surely appear on any list of the top “Minneapolis Sound” productions.
Jesse returned in 1986 with his incredible second album Shockadelica. This led to a little situation with Prince, where Prince told Jesse that every good album ought to have a strong title track, and that he’d written a song of that same name upon learning the name of Jesse’s album and wanted to give it to him. Jesse, wanting to maintain his independence outside of the Prince-sphere, declined the offer, at which point Prince simply stated he’d release the song himself, which he went on to do in 1987 as the B-Side to If I Was Your Girlfriend. As you might imagine, this didn’t go down well with Jesse at the time, but all these decades later, it certainly makes for a great story.
The most impressive thing about the Shockadelica album, though, is that Jesse managed to co-ordinate the return of funk legend Sly Stone, with the two of them duetting on the insanely funky single, Crazay.
Jesse’s work was also making enough noise for Hollywood to come knocking on his door, and thus, Jesse was asked to write a song for the movie Pretty In Pink, which went on to become a huge hit and is considered a classic movie of the 1980s. Get To Know Ya featured both in the movie itself and on the soundtrack and is another Jesse Johnson classic!
Just like Prince, in a way that seems strange these days, some of Jesse’s best work around this time are songs that were only released as B-Sides to singles. Due to not being on albums, I often feel that these two songs are overlooked by many, but they are absolutely incredible. First, there’s Fool’s Paradise, which was the B-Side to Baby Let’s Kiss.
Next is a track that actually gathered a lot of radio play back when it was released and is another Jesse classic — I’m talking about Free World. This stone cold jam got a lot of attention in the purple community due to it’s lyric about Prince where Jesse sang “Nobody likes the way I hold my mic, they say it’s too much like my friend”.
It was 1988 that ended up being Jesse’s biggest year yet. Firstly, it was in this year that Jesse dropped his third solo album, Every Shade of Love, which notably features one of my all-time fave Jesse songs, I’m Just Wanting You. Seriously, check out the guitar work on this song. It’s on another level.
Next up was the sophomore album from Ta Mara & The Seen, entitled Blueberry Gossip. This album didn’t do as well as their first, but it still contained some serious grooves produced by Jesse.
In the face of a changing music scene, with hip-hop and new jack swing starting to come to the forefront, Jesse’s brand of Minneapolis funk got decidedly more hardcore and aggressive. This culminated in the formation of a new group, daKRASH. daKRASH’s record is probably only known to serious funk fans, but it is absolutely vital in the Minneapolis scene in my opinion. Jesse’s productions on this record are phenomenal, and I particularly love the aggressive drum programming. I’ve spent many a studio session myself trying to make the snares crack like the ones on Wasn’t I Good To Ya?
But that ain’t all. There was still time to bring back not one, but TWO former Prince proteges. First of all, Jesse produced the second album by Minneapolis vocalist Sue Ann Carwell. What many people don’t know is that, ten years before this in 1978, Sue Ann had been Prince’s first vocal protege, recording several songs with him that remain unreleased to this day, including Since We’ve Been Together and I’m Saving It Up. Another song, Make It Through The Storm was released by Sue Ann in 1981, but in a re-recorded form with no musical contributions by Prince (although it was still based on his music).
Despite being an early collaborator and part of the Minneapolis scene, Sue Ann was absent from the rising stardom of Prince and the Minneapolis scene in the early 80s. Jesse producing her second album, Blue Velvet in 1988 was really something special, because it finally gave Sue Ann, an important early figure in the Minneapolis scene an opportunity to lay down her incredible vocal talents on some serious Minneapolis Sound grooves.
But Sue Ann wasn’t the only former Prince collaborator who teamed up with Jesse that year………….Who could the other one be? The original Nasty Girl herself!
Jesse brought none other than Vanity back for an incredibly funky comeback in 1988, producing her track Undress from the movie Action Jackson.
Still, the Minneapolis Sound wasn’t done in bringing new stars to the table, and in 1988, a whole host of producers connected to the Minneapolis Sound all worked on what would become one of the year’s biggest albums, the debut album by Paula Abdul entitled Forever Your Girl.
Three of the singles were produced by Oliver Leiber, formerly a member of Ta Mara & The Seen (see above!), one of those being Opposites Attract, which was a collaboration with Tony Christian and Marr Starr from Mazarati (whose own debut came out in 1985 on Paisley Park Records), and another track from the album, entitled I Need You was produced by…….. Jesse Johnson!
Forever Your Girl was a huge success, further proving that Jesse was a star producer and songwriter.
Jesse continued to produce into 1989 and 1990, working on cuts for the likes of Debbie Allen, Cheryl Lynn and Mother’s Finest.
Jesse also teamed up with legendary saxophonist Clarence Clemons (most well known as a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band) for the funky jazz crossover track Shotgun.
Jesse’s protege group daKRASH also resurfaced but in a different way. There had been some issues with their singer, Robert Jordan, and the group had broken up, but in 1990 they reformed with a new singer, Dion Craig, under the new name of Kool Skool. Their style had switched from funk to New Jack Swing, but Jesse remained the producer of the group. Kool Skool proved that Jesse could get down and adapt to the New Jack Swing style.
Jesse was rumoured to be working on a New Jack Swing style album himself, which was allegedly named Real Life Mode. This album never surfaced, but years later, one track supposedly from these sessions made it’s way to the internet, entitled Crazy Love. The song is no longer on YouTube, but it was a tantalising glimpse of what might have been had Jesse decided to follow that path.
1990 would the year that Jesse’s career went full circle in one particular way. Prince had spent a few years working on-and-off on his third motion picture, Graffiti Bridge. Although it wasn’t originally intended to be a sequel to Purple Rain, that’s what ended up happening, allegedly due to pressure from the movie studio and associated financiers (you know how Hollywood loves sequels!). In their eyes, since Purple Rain had been a huge hit, and Under The Cherry Moon had not been, the logical thing to do would be to make a follow up to Purple Rain.
So if that’s what you have to do, then you need The Time. And if you’re going to get The Time, who at this point had been broken up for 5 years, you might as well try and reunite the original group. And thus, the original lineup reunites for the movie, and for a brand new album called Pandemonium.
I’m sure many of you reading this will be aware of the biggest single from the Pandemonium album, Jerk Out. Written by Prince, and actually first recorded by Mazarati but never released by them, it would become The Time’s biggest hit. But, Pandemonium is notable for other reasons when it pertains to Jesse Johnson, and that’s that he, along with other bandmembers, got to have much more input in the writing and recording of this album than any previous Time record. This time around, Jesse wrote the music for Blondie, Skillet, and along with Prince, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the title track Pandemonium.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t to last, and The Time broke up again not long after the release of this album and the Graffiti Bridge movie.
It wouldn’t be long before we heard a Jesse song in a movie again, though. In 1991, The Five Heartbeats was released, telling the story of the fictional soul band of the same name, loosely based on the stories of several soul bands and acts including The Temptations, The Dells, The Four Tops, and Sam Cooke. Nights Like This by the group After 7, written and produced by Jesse, is considered the breakout song from this movie, and it netted Jesse and the group an ASCAP award. I think the most impressive thing about this song is simply how well it captures the 60’s/70's soul sound as depicted in the movie. Although it was written and recorded in 1990, if you played it through an old radio you could easily be fooled into thinking it’s an old Motown song.
Unfortunately, this was the end of the hyper-productive part of Jesse’s career. While we would have loved to hear more from Jesse in this time frame, everyone needs a break sometimes and it’s quite possible that Jesse may have been feeling burned out, or had other priorities going on for the next few years. It would be 5 years before Jesse staged a glorious comeback with the blistering blues rock record Bare My Naked Soul in 1996. This record was definitely worth the wait, with Jesse absolutely and thoroughly wielding his axe!
Sadly Jesse’s return to music wouldn’t last long, and this would be the last Jesse Johnson album for 13 years.
Aside from a brief reunion of The Time when they performed with Rihanna at the Grammy Awards in 2008, it wouldn’t be until the following year that we really heard from Jesse again.
In 2009 we got not one, but two new albums from Jesse— Verbal Penetration I & II.
This can definitely be considered Jesse’s magnum opus. It’s an absolute tour de force of style and songwriting, from the funk grooves like 1000 Watts of Funky, the blistering rock of tracks like the title track, and even spoken-word thoughts from Jesse. My favourite song though, is the jazzy R&B of Sheila Rae.
Sue Ann Carwell can once again be heard all over the Verbal Penetration album, and the following year she’d team up with Jesse again for her phenomenal album Blues In My Sunshine. Such was the depth of Jesse’s input on this record that he even gets a co-artist credit. Sadly, this album doesn’t appear to currently be available on streaming services (Please fix this, Sue Ann!) but if you can track it down, it’s well worth the listen!
This was once again a beautiful time to be a Jesse Johnson fan, not least because in 2011 it was announced that we would finally be treated to a full on proper reunion of The Time. One problem — there were issues around using the name. It’s still not quite clear what the crux of the problem was from Prince’s side, but meetings were had to try and resolve it, but sadly the issue of the name wasn’t resolved.
Regardless, we all knew who The Original 7Ven really were, and I’m sure Prince himself even cracked a wry smile when he saw their Condensate album cover, which features the phrase “The Band Formerly Known As The Time”.
Once again, several songs came from Jesse including Role Play, Sick and Lifestyle. My personal favorite though, is AYDKMN (Aw You Don’t Know Me Now?) which musically is clearly a Jesse song through and through which evokes both Jesse’s early Minneapolis jams and his later blues-rock efforts.
Once again, it wasn’t to last. The edition of the album sold at Best Buy came with a behind-the-scenes DVD which wasn’t an easy watch, with notable tension being obvious in the body language of the band-members at times.
It’s unclear what exactly caused the split this time, but words and versions of events were exchanged. Morris, Monte and Jellybean fractured back into their long-term “Morris Day & The Time” touring lineup of the band, Jimmy Jam &Terry Lewis returned to Los Angeles, and Jesse joined D’Angelo’s band The Vanguard who started touring ahead of and around the release of D’Angelo’s own long awaited comeback album Black Messiah.
This leads us to where we are today. Following the tragic loss of Prince in 2016, many of his associates old and new searched for the right way to pay tribute to him and tell their stories. Jesse performed in Minneapolis at Bunker’s bar in 2017, treating the audience to his own memories of working with Prince and leading the audience in a soulful sing along of Purple Rain. Seriously, just listen to that guitar tone. Phenomenal.
And if you needed proof that brotherly love can triumph over disagreements, in 2017 we also got another reunion of The Time, Jesse included, at the Grammy Awards where they paid tribute to Prince along with Bruno Mars. Here’s some footage of these cool brothers getting their photographs taken.
Hopefully you enjoyed this history of the Minneapolis icon that is Jesse Johnson. If you get the chance to see him this year at Celebration 2019, it’s sure to be an incredible performance. And Jesse, if you’re reading this, we’d love to sit down with you for an interview sometime 😉
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