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"Peerie" Willie Johnson (William Henry Johnson) (10 December 1920 in
Yell A yell is a loud vocalization; see screaming. Yell may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Yell, Shetland, one of the North Isles of the Shetland archipelago, Scotland * Yell Sound, Shetland, Scotland United States * Yell, Tennessee, an un ...
,
Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the n ...
– 22 May 2007 in
Lerwick Lerwick (; non, Leirvik; nrn, Larvik) is the main town and port of the Shetland archipelago, Scotland. Shetland's only burgh, Lerwick had a population of about 7,000 residents in 2010. Centred off the north coast of the Scottish mainland ...
, Shetland) was a Scottish folk
guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...
ist and
bassist A bassist (also known as a bass player or bass guitarist) is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass (upright bass, contrabass, wood bass), bass guitar (electric bass, acoustic bass), synthbass, keyboard bass or a low b ...
. He was respected as an influential and innovative musician in the Shetland folk scene. Since 2005 there has been a "Peerie" Willie Guitar Festival" each year on the islands. "Peerie" is a
Shetland dialect Shetland dialect (also variously known as Shetlandic; broad or auld Shetland or Shaetlan; and referred to as Modern Shetlandic Scots (MSS) by some linguists) is a dialect of Insular Scots spoken in Shetland, an archipelago to the north of m ...
word, meaning "small" or "little".


Early life and career

Johnson was well known for a playing style described as "dum chuck" combining elements of American
Western swing Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance ...
and jazz with traditional Shetland fiddling music. He was associated with the stylistically opposite
fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, the ...
player Dr Tom Anderson, and was an influence on
Aly Bain Aly Bain MBE (born 15 May 1946) is a Scottish fiddler who learned his instrument from the old-time master Tom Anderson. The former First Minister of Scotland Jack McConnell called Bain a "Scottish icon." Career Bain was born in the town of ...
(fiddle) and Martin Taylor (guitar). Johnson's childhood was plagued by ill health which interrupted his schooling; he left school without qualifications. However, he took up music after seeing a photograph of a
ukulele The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ), also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings. The tone and volume of the instrumen ...
-playing
cowboy A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the '' vaqu ...
. Starting on the instrument, he soon switched to the guitar, despite the fiddle's status as lead instrument in Shetland's folk music. A meeting with Anderson in 1936 got him a job with the local Islesburgh Dance Band, then the biggest band in Shetland. Hearing
Eddie Lang Eddie Lang (born Salvatore Massaro, October 25, 1902 – March 26, 1933) was an American musician who is credited as the father of jazz guitar. During the 1920s, he gave the guitar a prominence it previously lacked as a solo instrument, as p ...
and
Django Reinhardt Jean Reinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953), known by his Romani nickname Django ( or ), was a Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most ...
on the radio, he adapted their guitar style to Shetland's music, creating a sound that sounded "like a bass and a guitar playing together" according to fellow musician and writer Archie Fisher. Fisher states that at one festival in Johnson's last years he was surrounded by guitarists from around the world, listening to him play. "They were all sitting there like disciples", such was the respect that Johnson held in the folk music world. In 2005 Johnson was one of the first inductees into the Scottish Traditional Hall of Fame.


Recordings

Johnson made recordings of his music which can be found on anthologies such as ''Shetland Folk Fiddling'', and on records and DVDs by Aly Bain, who also featured him on his ''Aly Bain and Friends'' television programme.


References


External links


Peerie Willie Johnson at the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of FameObituary in ''The Independent''Obituary in ''The Scotsman''Shetland music.com obituary
British folk guitarists British male guitarists People from Yell, Shetland 1920 births 2007 deaths Shetland music Male bass guitarists 20th-century bass guitarists 20th-century British male musicians {{UK-bass-guitarist-stub