Johnny Jones and The King Casuals

Its Gonna Be Good info sticker on the 7"

Johnny Jones and the King Casuals were a rhythm and blues group active in the 1960s. They were regular performers at the North Nashville club district, Printer's Alley clubs, as well as often serving as the house band for the local television program, Night Train and The !!!! Beat.

History[edit | edit source]

The band, which was originally named 'The King Kasuals', was founded in 1962 by Jimmy (before he was Jimi) Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox in Clarksville, after the two were discharged from the adjacent Fort Campbell Army post, and eventually relocated to Nashville.

Johnny Jones moved back to Nashville in the early 1960s to become a session musician and formed the band The Imperial Seven. He eventually assumed leadership of the King Casuals, circa 1964. The band recorded a portfolio of singles in later years. The final recording featuring Jones was his 2001 solo release, Blues Is In the House.

Jimmy Church eventually joined the group with several years experience already. Starting from his group The Seniors in the late 50s as well as a doo-wop single recorded with Bobby Hebb in 1959 as the Hi-Fis, Jimmy Church had a series of singles in the early to mid 60s as a solo artist. Church provided much to the band from backing vocals, solo work and even providing percussion work, including hand drums on a performance on The !!!! Beat.

"Sweet" Charles Sherrell, the bassist, had originally practiced with Jimmy Hendrix and Billy Cox at the Club Del Morocco as their drummer during practice sessions, and would later pick up the bass. In his bio, Sweet says that he "knew how to play guitar because Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions were in Nashville during their recordings and on the days that they came to practice, Sweets would wash Curtis' Jaguar and learned to play Curtis guitar for pay." A few months later, "the word was out that Miss Franklin was coming to the city looking for a band to take out on the road with her and Jackie Wilson." The band she chose was Johnny Jones and the King Casuals, and Johnny asked Sweet to sit in on bass. He recalls making his way to a pawn shop to purchase a bass that cost $69,-. "I had 3 weeks to learn how to play it, which -thank GOD- I did". So he joined the band. From there, Sweet would go on to have a lasting career in music, including most prominently in the backing band for James Brown., Al Green, and Maceo & All the King's Men.

In his book "House of Broken Hearts," E. Mark Windle writes "After a number of personnel changes within The Imperials and The King Kasuals, Jones, Hendrix and Cox came together as a performing group in their own right; supporting visiting acts in the area on the chitlin’ circuit and undertaking session work. During this time, vocalist Jimmy Church also joined the fold.... At the time of the Peachtree signing in 1968, The King Casuals’ manager divided Jimmy and the rest of the band into two separate acts, both recording for the label at the same time."

"Purple Haze" by Johnny Jones and the King Casuals was a popular R&B single in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Johnny Jones Personal[edit | edit source]

Johnny Jones with guitar

Johnny was born John Albert Jones, on August 17, 1936, in Eads, Tennessee.

He moved to Chicago, in the early 1950s, where he practised the blues with Junior Wells and Freddy King among others and moved back to Nashville in the early 1960s.

Many of Jones' later historic recordings were made alongside famed Nashville producer/songwriter/label owner Ted Jarrett in the 1960s.

Johnny Jones died on October 14, 2009, at age 73. Having no known family, fellow musician and longtime friend Jimmy Church handled funeral arrangements. According to the Tennessean,"Fellow musician and friend Jimmy Church, who played with Jones often, said Jones had no known family members. Church is handling arrangements, but those arrangements were still being planned at press time. "He didn't want a funeral," Church said. "He didn't believe in them... I'd like to have a celebration of his life at The Place with all of his friends and fellow musicians. He was really known." The Place was a soul and R&B club founded by Jimmy Church in the early 2000s.

Ponderosa Stomp website writes:

Think back for a moment if you will, to a time when Nashville was as much an R&B flashpoint as it was America's country and western capital. During the '50s and '60s, clubs like the New Era, Club Baron and Club del Morocco pulsated to the music of nationally known R&B stars like Ray Charles, Etta James, Ike and Tina Turner and Bobby "Blue" Bland, while supporting a thriving local scene that boasted hard-hitters like Ted Jarrett, Christine Kittrell, Gene Allison and Earl Gaines. Radio Station WLAC beamed the blues and R&B sounds out to over half the country, with hosts Bill "Hoss" Allen and Gene Nobles spinning crazed discs that influenced everyone from Elvis Presley onwards.

Nowadays, an interstate highway system plows through the all-but destroyed former black entertainment district, WLAC has switched to an all-talk format and little music comes out of Nashville but cookie-cutter, radio-friendly hat acts masquerading as country.

Guitarist Johnny Jones flies in the face of it all, a one man testament to the hip Music City U.S.A. that once was.

Born in 1936, Jones moved to Chicago as a teenager, shortly after falling under the spell of the blues during a Joe Hill Louis performance in Memphis. Primed for the Windy City, he soon caught Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and moved into an apartment with harmonica player Walter McCollum with whom he formed his first band. He worked with Junior Wells and Freddy King before moving back to Nashville and beginning a career as a studio musician. In the early '60s, he formed the Imperial Seven and they found steady work at the New Era Club, where he crossed paths with a young Jimi Hendrix—then playing alongside future Band Of Gypsies bassist Billy Cox in the King Casuals—who often showed up to sit in and glean tips from Jones.

By mid-decade he was playing along side Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown on Hoss Allen's mind-blowing Shindig-style television dance show The!!!!Beat, where he renewed his acquaintance with frequent guest Freddy King. Shortly thereafter, he joined the King Casuals, who were signed by Brunswick Records in 1968. The band's trio of singles for the label, commencing with the apocalyptically-named "It's Gonna Be Good" clear on through the crackling "Soul Poppin'" and a soul rendition of Hendrix's "Purple Haze" can only be termed—in the perfectly succinct words of the Funky Sixteen Corners website—as "prime examples of blues players getting funky." Indeed, Jones' twangy guitar is at the forefront throughout.

Reviews[edit | edit source]

Purple Haze info sticker on vinyl

Face Radio of Brooklyn writes:

Formed out of Nashville R’n’B group the ‘King Kasuals’, the original line up included a young musician called Jimi Hendrix. When he left, they were joined by Johnny Jones, renamed, and signed to Brunswick where they recorded a slim portfolio for the label. “Purple Haze” (1968) a funked-up cover version, no doubt tipped a hat in the direction of their former member, however rather than being a tepid tribute, this well executed thriller is a melting pot of soulful horns and animation, it’s a fabulous version that packs one hell of a punch! by GARY BOND

Larry Grogan, of Funky 16 Corners, writes:

Sometime after 1965 Hendrix and Cox both left the King Casuals. Cox would reunite with Hendrix a few years later in the Band of Gypsies. Hendrix would go on to a brief sojourn with Carl Holmes & The Commanders (in Philadelphia) and then on to Greenwich Village where he would be discovered and spirited off to the UK.

In 1968 Brunswick Records signed the King Casuals (now billed as Johnny Jones & the King Casuals). They would record a series of three 45’s for the label between the end of 1968 and the middle of 1969.

All three of these records were prime examples of blues players getting funky (see the aforementioned Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Little Sonny, Chick Willis, Ice Water Slim, Slim Harpo etc.).

The first, ‘It’s Gonna Be Good’ b/w ‘Chip Off The Old Block’ is a funky killer. The instrumental ‘It’s Gonna Be Good’ opens with a horn fanfare and a grunt from the band, followed by someone wailing ‘OOBAY OOBAY OOBAY!!!’. There’s a great funky guitar line, a hard back-beat and some wailing Hammond organ. Jones lays down some twangy guitar in the background too. ‘Chip Off The Old Block’ (which Jones would re-record in the 90’s) is more blues-based (but still pretty funky). There are some great Stax-style horns (William Bell probably had something to do with that), and Jones gets to wail on the guitar. The group’s second 45 for Brunswick, ‘Soul Poppin’ b/w ‘Blues for the Brothers’ keeps the momentum going. ‘Soul Poppin’ (another instrumental) is by far the most intense thing the King Casuals ever laid down on vinyl. It opens with Jones’ guitar strumming alone, joined almost immediately by the horn section (with a line that sounds like it was based on ‘Sweet Soul Music’) and the pounding drums.

The tune moves a long at a breakneck pace, and Jones gets to take a nice long solo. It’s not hard to imagine it being a huge favorite with the dancers. The flip side, ‘Blues for the Brothers’ is a slow tempo, straight blues instrumental where Jones gets to solo at length.

Johnny Jones and the King Casuals third and last 45 for Brunswick is perhaps their best known. Their cover of former King Casuals member Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ is a Northern Soul fave. It takes the psychedelic classic and bends it out of shape, making it a soul shouter. The singer tends to depart from the lyric sheet, but the band makes up for it in spirit. It makes you wonder what Hendrix thought of it. The flip side, ‘Horsing Around’ is a smooth soul instrumental with a tip of the hat to Cliff Nobles and Co.

After the King Casuals stint with Brunswick, Jones went on to record a few 45’s for the Peachtree label, and did a short stint in the band of Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland. In the late 90’s, Jones made his first full length LPs for the Black Magic and Northern Blues labels.