Soap Box

It would be hard - no, impossible - for me to think what my life and career in the music business would have been like, had I not met a Texan named Donald William Johnston, known to the music world as Bob.

It was 1959, I was a 22-year-old kid with a five-piece rock and roll band taking my first trip west of the Mississippi River to do our first tour of California, with a stopover in Fort Worth, TX to renew old acquaintances with a friend named Bill Belcher, who had moved back to Texas after a hitch in the Marine Corps.

Bill was a drummer who played around Jacksonville, NC when he was stationed at nearby Camp Lejeune Marine Base. My band played the beer joints there and we had met and become friends and stayed in touch as our paths separated.

We had planned on spending a couple of nights in Fort Worth before going on out to the west coast to begin our tour, so Bill showed us around town and introduced us to a guy named Don Johnston, an energetic, charismatic character who was working full time at the Bell Helicopter factory and spending his nights trying to make a career in the music business.

He was a talented and prolific songwriter who was on a small retainer from Mellin Music - a New York based music publishing company - and had had some minor success in having some of his songs recorded.

Don asked me if we'd like to record something while we were in town and I told him I didn't have anything to record. Well, in what I was to come to know as typical Don Johnston fashion, he said, "Well, let's write something".

We set the band up at Don's mother, Diane's, house and wrote a sax and guitar instrumental called �Jaguar�, went into a studio in Fort Worth and recorded it the next night and pulled out for California having made an acquaintance that would turn into a friendship that would last for over 50 years and have a profound effect on the path my professional life would take. 

�Jaguar� was released on Epic Records and though it was not a hit, it got a lot of Top 40 airplay and really got me excited about making records.

Don changed his professional name to Bob and moved to Nashville in the early sixties where he proceeded to write songs and cut demo records, waiting for that big break he knew was coming his way some day.

He was confidence personified and a human dynamo who thought nothing about staying up all night to finish a project. When you worked with Bob you may as well get ready to burn the midnight oil and see the sun come up if that's what it took to make something good happen.

When he invited me to come to Nashville in 1962 for a writing session, I jumped on a plane and headed for Music City. We wrote a song called �It Hurts Me� which was recorded by Elvis Presley in 1963.

Needless to say it was by far the biggest thing that had ever happened to me and, as usual, Bob Johnston was right in the middle of it.

The A & R department at Columbia Records hired Bob and he moved to New York where his legendary reputation as a record producer began. His brought Bob Dylan to Nashville to record Blonde on Blonde in 1996 and when the legendary Don Law retired as head of A & R in Nashville, Bob moved his wife, Joy, and the family back to Tennessee and took over Columbia Records� Nashville Branch and his rocket ship took off.

His first encounter with Marty Robbins produced a number one record called �Camilla�, he did hugely successful records with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, brought Leonard Cohen to Music City to record Bird On a Wire, and brought Dylan back to town and did Johnny Cash's Live at Folsom Prison.

In 1969, Bob called me in to work on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album, a move that meant so much to a struggling musician, raising my profile and respect level several notches.

When the Youngbloods management called Bob and asked about him producing an album for them, Bob told them that his roster was full but he had a young guy named Charlie Daniels he could send out, resulting in my working with the Youngbloods on Elephant Mountain and Ride the Wind.

I could go on naming the many things Bob Johnston did for me over our fifty-year plus relationship, but I'd like to sum it up with an album dedication I made to Bob a few years ago.

�We shared our cups and toasted our times
In rot gut bourbon and fine French wines
Old friend we been a mile or two together�

He passed away August 14, 2015 at the age of 83.

Rest in peace, Bob Johnston, my dear old friend. I loved you like the brother I never had.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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