You’ve probably heard his voice without even realizing it. That "bow wow wow yippi-yo yippi-yay" line Snoop Dogg made famous? Yeah, that wasn't Snoop. It was a guy who’d been shredding on the guitar since the Truman administration. Johnny "Guitar" Watson was a freak of nature in the music world, a man who basically lived three different lives before he finally collapsed on a stage in Japan in 1996.
Honestly, most people today bucket him as just another 70s funk artist with a pimp aesthetic. But that’s doing him dirty. Johnny Guitar Watson songs are a blueprint for everything from heavy metal feedback to the rhythmic flow of modern rap. He was a teenage blues prodigy, a jazz pianist, a soul crooner, and eventually, the "Gangster of Love" who out-funked almost everyone in the disco era.
The Space Guitar and the Birth of the "Evil" Sound
In 1954, Watson released an instrumental called "Space Guitar." It’s hard to overstate how weird this record was for the time. This was years before Jimi Hendrix or even the concept of "rock and roll" had fully gelled.
Watson was doing things with reverb and feedback that shouldn't have been possible with the tech of the 1950s. He didn't use a pick. Instead, he plucked the strings with his bare fingers, "stressifying" them—as he called it—until they screamed. Frank Zappa once said that Watson’s 1956 track "Three Hours Past Midnight" was the reason he picked up a guitar in the first place. Zappa called his playing "extremely evil-sounding," and he meant it as the highest compliment. It wasn't polite music. It was aggressive, sharp, and almost violent in its precision.
The Hits You Actually Know
If you look at the charts, Watson didn't really explode into the mainstream until he reinvented himself in the mid-70s. This is the era of the three-piece suits, the wide-brimmed hats, and the gold teeth. He signed with DJM Records and started pumping out tracks that defined "workingman’s funk."
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- A Real Mother for Ya (1977): This is arguably his biggest hit. It’s a song about how expensive life is—the cost of gas, the rent, the struggle. It hit number 5 on the R&B charts and actually cracked the UK Top 50.
- Superman Lover (1976): A smooth, swagger-heavy track that basically invented the "playa" persona in music. It’s been sampled to death by hip-hop producers.
- Ain’t That a Bitch (1976): The title track of his gold-certified album. It’s gritty, it’s funny, and it’s unapologetically honest about the economic recession of the time.
- Gangster of Love: He recorded this multiple times. The 1957 version didn't do much, but the 1978 re-recording became his signature. Steve Miller liked it so much he famously referenced the title in his song "The Joker."
Why Johnny Guitar Watson Songs Sound Different
Most funk artists of the late 70s were leaning hard into the "Wall of Sound" approach—huge orchestras, dozens of layers, and a massive disco sheen. Watson went the other way. He was a minimalist.
He often played almost all the instruments himself. If you listen closely to a track like "I Need It," you’re hearing Watson on guitar, bass, and keyboards. He had this weird, jerky timing that felt like he was talking through his instrument. He didn't care about playing "on the beat" in a traditional sense. He played around it, using speech rhythms that felt more like a conversation than a song.
This is why he was such a massive influence on hip-hop. He was basically rapping on tracks like "Telephone Bill" (1980) way before rap was a commercial force. He wasn't just a singer; he was a storyteller who used his guitar to punctuate his jokes.
The Forgotten Jazz and Soul Years
There’s a weird gap in his discography in the late 60s where he dropped the "Guitar" from his name and just went by Johnny Watson. He was tired of being pigeonholed as a bluesman.
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During this time, he released The Blues Soul of Johnny "Guitar" Watson and In the Fats Bag, which was a tribute to Fats Waller. He was a killer jazz pianist. He even teamed up with Larry Williams for a while, making some of the rawest soul-rock ever recorded. If you can find their version of "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," listen to it. It’s got a grit that most of the pop versions lack.
He was always chasing the "next" thing. Sometimes it worked, like the funk era. Sometimes it didn't—like his 1980s experiments with drum machines and heavy synthesizers, which some critics felt stripped away the "soul" of his playing. But even in those later years, he was still the same guy who could shut down a room with a single, nasty note.
The Legacy: From Zappa to Snoop
It’s kind of wild that a guy who started out playing juke joints in Houston ended up being sampled by Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and Redman.
When Watson died on stage at the Blues Cafe in Yokohama, Japan, he was in the middle of a guitar solo. There’s a rumor—largely confirmed by people there—that his last words were actually "Ain’t that a bitch." Whether that’s 100% true or just the kind of legend a man like Watson deserves, it fits.
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He was a gunslinger. He never stopped moving.
How to Appreciate Johnny Guitar Watson Today
If you're looking to actually get into his music, don't just stick to the "Greatest Hits" compilations. Those are fine, but they usually miss the evolution.
- Start with "Space Guitar" (1954) to hear where the madness began.
- Listen to "Three Hours Past Midnight" for the Zappa connection.
- Spin the Ain't That a Bitch album front to back to understand the transition to funk.
- Check out "Bow Wow" (1994). It was his final "comeback" album and earned him a Grammy nomination. It’s basically him acknowledging his influence on the West Coast hip-hop scene that was dominating the radio at the time.
Johnny "Guitar" Watson songs aren't just relics of the 70s. They are the bridge between the Delta blues and the digital age. He was too weird for the 50s and too bluesy for the 80s, but for a solid decade in between, he was the coolest guy in the room.
Next Steps for Your Playlist
To truly hear the influence, listen to Johnny’s original 1957 "Gangster of Love" and then immediately play Snoop Dogg’s "What's My Name?" or Dr. Dre’s "Let Me Ride." You’ll hear the DNA of the G-Funk sound—the lazy, laid-back groove and the high-pitched synth lines—that Watson was perfecting decades before Compton was on the map.