Bob Johnston (left) with Leonard Cohen in 1972
Bill Wilson's Ever Changing Minstrel has to be in the running for the most obscure record Bob Johnston ever produced in Nashville — a well-traveled singer-songwriter from Indiana, Wilson simply showed up at the door of the famed Music City record producer one day in early 1973, and the rest is history. By that time, Johnston had been at the helm for Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, as well as albums by The Byrds and Simon & Garfunkel. Johnston was known for bucking the Nashville studio system, and for getting great results from idiosyncratic artists, while Wilson was a nobody. Ever Changing Minstrel was Wilson's shot — he died in 1993 — and the masters lay in the Columbia vaults until
Tompkins Squarelabel head Josh Rosenthal bought the album for a quarter last year, and decided to reissue it.
First released in late 1973 as a Columbia LP, Ever Changing Minstrel is a remarkable record in many ways — for one thing, the crack band that Johnston assembled behind the unknown songwriter included Mac Gayden, Charlie McCoy, Kenny Buttrey and Jerry Reed. The music was post-folkie country-rock that featured Wilson's virile but wounded vocals and Gayden's evocative slide guitar, and the songs were rooted in the harsh economic reality Wilson apparently knew first-hand. “Pay Day Give Away” is a beautifully written account of various scams, from pool hustling to card sharking, but Wilson addresses the song to a woman whose man is falling prey to this trickery: “Card shark, dealing his mark / To a payday giveaway in the dark / Lucy Ann, your man has been out ramblin' / What will he be bringing home to you."
The Cream caught up with Johnston to get his take on Wilson's record, and to ask the legendary producer about some of his career highlights. At 80, the Texas-born Johnston remains a proponent of the merits of catching the unguarded musical moment. Coming from a musical family — both his mother and grandmother were songwriters — Johnston got his break devising a hit record for Patti Page, a Columbia Records artist who was going through a dry spell. Johnston produced most of Dylan's Highway 61, and achieved fame working with the great songwriter on such albums as Blonde on Blonde and Nashville Skyline. Fans of Nashville's wackier side may not be aware of Johnston's superbly demented 1966 full-length, Moldy Goldies: Colonel Jubilation B. Johnston and His Mystic Knights Band and Street Singers Attack the Hits — it's an out-of-print classic filled with absurdist cover versions of '60s pop and rock 'n' roll tunes. He has also worked with Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Joe Ely and Loudon Wainwright III. In recent years, Johnston has kept his hand in record production with a few low-key projects, and says he's working on a book about his experiences. Johnston is outspoken, not to mention plain-spoken, and he spoke to us from his current home in Southern California.
