👀Check This Out! - Johnny Guitar Watson live - Look in sidebar for a quick video

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Johnny "Guitar" Watson was the ultimate musical shape-shifter, blazing a trail through blues, soul, and funk for over forty years with a ton of attitude and a wildly aggressive guitar style. Growing up in Houston and later cutting his teeth in Los Angeles, he wasn't afraid to break the rules from day one. In fact, his 1954 track "Space Guitar" practically predicted psychedelic rock by messing around with feedback and reverb a decade before anyone else caught on. Through the ’50s and ’60s, he racked up R&B hits like "Three Hours Past Midnight" and the famously cool "Gangster of Love," cementing his reputation as a guitar hero who could out-play and out-swagger just about anyone on the scene. But instead of riding the nostalgia wave, Watson completely flipped the script in the mid-1970s and reinvented himself as a flashy, gold-tooth-wearing funk maestro. He started producing his own records, playing almost all the instruments himself, and dropping massive, bass-heavy grooves like "A Real Mother For Ya" and "Superman Lover." His over-the-top stage persona and genius arrangements blew the minds of everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Prince, and his tracks later became the actual DNA for West Coast hip-hop, sampled heavily by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. He played hard right up until the very end, famously collapsing mid-song during a gig in Yokohama, Japan, in 1996, leaving behind a legacy as one of the baddest to ever pick up an instrument.


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Johnny "Guitar" Watson: Selected Studio Discography

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