Evil-Sounding Guitar Player

Johnny "Guitar" Watson

A effective bluesman since his adolescent years at the beginning of 1950s, Johnny "Guitar" Watson scored many chart achievements in the 1970s with a unique guitar-based sound that mixed the feel and instrumental technique of the blues with the bass-heavy sound of funk. Accepted by guitar players focusing on numerous styles of music, and recruited as a sideman by FZ, Watson contributed to Zappa's albums One Size Fits All , Them or Us , Thing-Fish  and Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention . Zappa also named "Three Hours Past Midnight" his beloved record in a 1989 interview.
Watson also excelled as a vocalist. His singing was by turns sexy, humorous, and political; his guitar playing exploited the full assortment of the instrument's powers. He was also a prolific songwriter.

FZ:Johnny Guitar Watson was an extremely evil-sounding guitar player at the time, but the smuttiest one I heard was Guitar Slim  (Eddie Jones)... just pure smut. The thing that I liked about the two solos I heard when I was 16 that really intrigued me – the solo on Three Hours Past Midnight and the solo on The Story Of My Life – was not just the tone of the instrument but the absolute maniac way that he spewed out these notes in a phrase with little or no regard to the rest of the meter or what was going on, but still being aware of where the beat was. He was just yellin' it at you.

Frank Zappa, Mongolian tuvas, The Chieftains, Johnny Guitar Watson...Event Over FZ House 

Someday, Watson and company co-owner Joe Bihari went to see the 1954 Sterling Hayden film “Johnny Guitar,” and Watson acquired the nickname that would stick with him for his whole performing career. In this time he also started to style himself as the “Gangster of Love,” after the title of a 1957 single Watson cut for the Keen label. This blues piece was successfully covered by rock performer Steve Miller in 1968 and again by Watson himself in 1978.