Advertisement

Still performing at age 75, Tommy Johnson says his musical ability is 'kind of a miracle'

 
Self-taught musician Tommy Johnson started playing the piano at age 4. He performs without sheet music.
Self-taught musician Tommy Johnson started playing the piano at age 4. He performs without sheet music.
Published April 3, 2015

HUDSON

After 60 years of performing professionally, Tommy Johnson knows what gets people going, and he aims to please.

Donned in signature stage clothes, the hint of a silver ponytail sprouting from his black fedora, Johnson takes turns playing three digital keyboards positioned against a red velvet backdrop. Fingers bounce rapidly across black and white keys as he leans in to hold a chord or flip a switch to bring up the sound of a flute, clarinet, saxophone or percussion.

There is no sheet music. Notes simply filter from the brain to aged fingers pounding out Rhapsody in Blue, Piano Man, The Phantom of the Opera, The Entertainer and a country tune called Orange Blossom Special because "you have to give people what they like."

Johnson, 75, has been doing this ever since he was a little kid growing up in Erie, Pa.

Name that tune, and he can play it — but never the same way twice, according to his younger brother, Keith, 70, who occasionally accompanies him on guitar.

"He specialized in all styles of music, whether it's Chopin or ragtime," Keith Johnson said. "He's amazing."

On top of that, he's never taken a lesson.

The process of playing by ear is an unfathomable curiosity for some, a matter of faith for Johnson.

"It was kind of a miracle," he said. "The music just came out. I didn't have to think about it or practice. If it was in my head, it would come out on the piano. I always knew there was something out there because the music just came through me. At an early age, I knew there was a greater power."

Johnson, who shares a name with the legendary Delta blues musician of the 1920s, plucked his first note at the age of 4 on an old upright. By 7, he was a local phenom, sliding across the wooden bench to reach the keys at neighborhood house parties.

There was no TV back then, so one of the first songs he learned was the theme from a favorite radio show — Freddy Martin's arrangement of Tchaikovsky's piano concerto Tonight We Love.

Word got around, and soon little Tommy was playing the Lions Club and taking first-place honors on the The Horace Heidt Show. At the age of 9, he was the first contestant on a new television show called Stairway to the Stars. He won that contest, too. While there, a photographer from Life magazine snapped a picture of Johnson that later accompanied a story about the rise of the newfangled television.

Johnson broadened his interests during his teen years, picking up the trombone, tuba, drums and glockenspiel while playing in the high school band.

"It got to be if someone was absent, (the director) would hand me an instrument and ask me to play it," said Johnson, who was then old enough to drive to Angelotti's Supper Club, where he made about $100 a week.

"The big bands were pretty popular, and of course I knew all the '50s stuff. If I didn't know it and someone could hum a few bars of it, I would play it on a spot," he said. "The piano bar was always full."

• • •

Johnson married at 21, moved to New Jersey, then to Ohio, where he and his wife had three kids and adopted another.

Planning your weekend?

Planning your weekend?

Subscribe to our free Top 5 things to do newsletter

We’ll deliver ideas every Thursday for going out, staying home or spending time outdoors.

You’re all signed up!

Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.

Explore all your options

While he sometimes had to improvise with odd jobs to support his family, Johnson's talent brought a career playing in piano bars and for stage shows across the United States and in Great Britain. He worked cruise ships that took him to Hawaii, Alaska and the Caribbean, and as a concert artist for piano and organ manufacturers.

Along the way, he encountered some names worth dropping.

He opened for 1950s sensation Johnnie Ray on the Jersey Shore and played Sweet Georgia Brown for the Globetrotters. He partied some with Willie Nelson and had the opportunity of a lifetime playing for Liberace in Las Vegas after entering a talent search sponsored by the Baldwin Piano Co. and landing in the top four.

"That was as far as I got," Johnson said with a sigh.

Even so, as Johnson hung out in the wings during rehearsal, Liberace invited him to play his glittery piano, giving Johnson a vote of confidence.

"He told me, 'I hope that you and I are never playing on the same night because I know where the crowd would be,' " Johnson said.

In 1980, Johnson got booked in Florida and ended up staying.

He worked beach hotels, cruise ships, seasonal festivals and other local gigs, including a handful of stage shows at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater. He had his own show on local cable television for four years, then started producing videos in a makeshift recording studio in the kitchen of an in-law suite at a house he shares with a longtime girlfriend. To date, he's generated more than 8 million views on YouTube.

These days, you might catch Johnson at happy hour at Mease Manor in Dunedin, Belleair Country Club, the Colorama Performance Club in Hudson, or, if you travel, in Arizona, where he's a favorite guest at the Sun City West Organ and Keyboard Club as well as at Crown Music in Sun City.

"He does a great performance," said Colorama owner Leslie Payne. "It's pretty remarkable that all that music comes out of his brain."

"If you give Tommy a set of keys and you ask him to play something, I don't care what it is, he plays it," said Donna Thomas, owner of Crown Music. "As an entertainer, he has it all — the personality, the charm, and he can play."

Health problems have slowed Johnson some, but even after heart, stomach and shoulder surgeries, he keeps at it. He says he's propelled in part by a near-death experience on the operating table and a goal to one day appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show so she can see what becomes of the child prodigies she invites on her show.

"I've seen the other side. I don't sweat the small stuff. And I don't worry about dying anymore," Johnson said. "Besides, I can't die right now. I'm booked!"

Michele Miller can be reached at mmiller@tampabay.com or at (727) 869-6251. Follow @MicheleMiller52.