| Loss
of a Blues Legend |
Associated
Press
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. - A blind man whose body
was found in an unheated apartment was identified by relatives Tuesday
as a legendary St. Louis blues guitarist and singer.
The victim was 86-year-old Clarence "Windy" Johnson. He
was found unconscious two weeks ago inside an apartment in East St.
Louis, Ill., and died a short time later of hypothermia.
Officials say that after a fire in his old apartment, Johnson moved,
and no one knew where he was. Johnson was a popular blues musician
in the St. Louis region in the 1940s and '50s, who sometimes played
with Miles Davis, also of East St. Louis.
"I guess he would probably sing the blues song, but in the ending
to that blues song, he probably would state that, 'this is the way
I will be discovered and found, and my music will probably live forever,"
Johnson's nephew, Don Harper, said. Funeral arrangements were pending.
Officials had suspected the victim was Johnson, but worried that unless
the body was positively identified, he would get a pauper's funeral
- in a donated casket and buried in an unmarked grave. Since the identification,
Johnson's body was moved from the morgue to Officer Funeral Home in
East St. Louis.
Johnson was largely influenced by his father, accomplished blues guitarist
Lonnie Johnson, said Henry Townsend, a heralded blues musician who
performed with Clarence Johnson years ago.
"I think (his father) was his reason for going after the music,"
Townsend, 96, of St. Louis, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "When
he was younger, he was going after it with all the gusto he could
put into it."
Johnson contracted diabetes years ago, causing him to go blind, Townsend
said. He described Johnson as a gentle, proud man."I hate to
see him die that way," Townsend said. ---
|
|
