Chicago Sun-Times
December 16, 1971
by Paul Galloway

One of the best things that happened to Michael Johnson occurred in 1957, when he was 13 years old: He contacted a severe case of pneumonia and was bedridden for five months.

Coincidentally — and fortunately, too, as it turned out — Michael's brother Paul, who was 20, suffered a badly broken leg and was laid up for the same period. The Johnsons moved in a couple of hospital beds for the boys and put them side by side in the living room of their Denver home.

To help pass the time during the long weeks of convalescence, their father bought the boys a guitar. It was a turning point in Michael's life.

In the 14 years since, Michael Johnson has become an accomplished musician, a guitarist of rare ability and remarkable range who can play intricately beautiful classical selections, liltingly delicate bossa novas and forceful and funky folk ballads, some of which he composed himself.

It is no exaggeration to say that Michael Johnson, who is ending a three-week engagement Sunday at the Earl of Old Town, is at the tip of another turning point, one that leads to recording contracts and the larger recognition every entertainer seeks.

There were other turning points. One came in 1964, when Michael. was an uninspired music student at Colorado State College. He entered a national folk guitar contest sponsored by Chicago's WGN Radio. After the field was cut to 175 budding strummers, he was among the 25 finalists who came to Chicago, where he won first prize.

"I won a tape recorder that didn't work and got to cut a record for Columbia," Johnson says.

"The record was Hills," a song I wrote when I was 15. It was terrible, and it sold 23 copies. I got a royalty check for 11 cents, which I framed. Every year, I get a letter trom Columbia asking me to cash it. They say I'm messing up their bookkeeping."

Another prize was a two-week engagement at It's Here, a Far North Side club.

"They didn't tell me I wouldn't be paid, though," he recalls. The two weeks stretched to 22, and he was paid for the last 20.

After that came another pivotal decision.

Johnson heard Luiz Bonfa of bossa-nova fame and composer of the theme from the movie "Black Orpheus." Bonfa was to be guest teacher at Andres Segovia's classical guitar school in Barcelona, and Johnson persuaded Bonia to teach him for nothing. Johnson scraped up $600 for fare and living costs and spent nine months in Spain.

"I cleaned up my leit hand in Spain — it had been pretty muddy — learned some new chords, learned bossa nova and classical. When you do classical, you don't think of the guitar as a chord instrument, you think about voices moving, about the internal workings of music." Back home, Johnson continued to polish himself. He sang and played with the Back Porch Majority, the New Society and the Mitchell Trio. He got into a company of "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," appearing in the show at Chicago's Happy Medium for nine months through February, 1970. Since then, he's been a single.

You have one weekend left to hear him at Earl's. You will hear variety, from Villa Lobos' Study No. 4 in E Minor, to Bonfa's bossa nova, to Johnson's "Something to Believe In" to Brel's "Old Folks."

The songs are played on a $125 Guild guitar covered with a 40-year-old top from a Spanish Fleta, a classical guitar.

Hearing Michael Johnson will make you sorry you never had pneumonia when you were 13-or happy he did.