Biography
Biography
Johnny has written with the help of his current wife, Jane, a short autobiography, to be published in the near future. In it he recounts snippets of his life, growing up as the son of a sharecropping family. His two elder sisters, Theora (d. 2003) and Mary (d. 1962), and older brother, Marvin (d. 2009), who saw service in the Korean war, were that bit older and ready to earn a living or even leave home when Johnny was still a child.
Much of his growing up was with his younger siblings Joe and Frank (d. 2023). His accounts show the fragility of peace and security for such a family as his, where mounting debts and the difficulties meant that the family moved frequently to a different State, usually at the dead of night so that they weren’t discovered and brought back. The children were only told at the last moment , for fear they would discuss this and that they would be discovered. In this way they moved from South carolina, to North Carolina and Georgia. spending some months in Washington DC, and eventually settling in Florida. When they left, the children could each take one thing with them. The mattress and copper, and the little else they had being crammed into the boot or onto the roof.
Frequently the family ended up too far away from a school way back in the woods, so the older ones helped in farming or turpentine tapping, a mule and cart serving as transport for the barrels of turpentine. This explains Johnny’s lack of schooling until he was able to settle in New york State after his mother’s death, and finally complete high school with Joe, his youngest brother.
Johnny’s mother, Annie Sue, died in 1956, just before Johnny’s 14th birthday. It created a rupture in the family, Johnny and Joe going to live with Mary in New Paltz, NY where she lived with her partner and son, and his brother, Frank choosing to stay close to his birth father, JC Mars, and remain in the South. Within a year or so he had got into the kind of trouble that Johnny feared that he himself might get into, and went to prison for manslaughter. Frank spent almost all his life in and out of jail, although to my memory he was a mild and kind man, and humbly embarrassed by his lack of education (author’s note here: JM).
Up north, Johnny benefitted from mixing with the college crowd, as New Paltz had an Art School to which many from New York came. There were eminent teachers and film makers who built its reputation, and from this mix were budding musicians who invited Johnny to join their band. The rest is history, as they say!
Johnny married his first wife, Annie Mae, while just out of school and they had their two daughters.
When the marriage failed, Johnny moved to California with Elaine, his second wife, white and Jewish, and also an artist from the college.
They spent 5 years in San Francisco, while Johnny built up his musical skills, determined to make it as a musician. In 1972 they came to Europe, first to Paris, where Elaine had family contacts, and then to London. This was where Johnny wanted to be, and he almost immediately played at the 100 club in Oxford Street and was able to record his first LP, Blues from Mars.
Johnny made the UK his home, playing on festivals in the UK and abroad and forming various bands. He recorded Stateside with Dan Kennedy and Bill Martin in 1994.
While Elaine returned to the USA around 1978, Johnny stayed, and married his third wife, Sheena, living with her in London until her retirement in 1998 when they moved to Somerset, UK. It was in the 1980s that he played with BB King in Hammersmith, and then in Montreux, as well as featuring for example in the Coln Festival and the San Francisco Blues Festival, and doing tours behind the then Iron Curtain in East Germany, Ireland, Czechoslovakia before the war, Scandinavia and many other places. He was responsible for persuading the Edinburgh Festival organisers to include Blues in their programme.
He didn’t drive in those days, and he talks of always being picked up from his home in a limousine or taxi when gong to a gig or the airport. He would have custom made shoes (in the days of platforms), and Sheenagh put together stage clothes in the height of fashion (this was the 1970s and 80s) - she was a skilled seamstress. These were heady days!
When Sheena died in 2001 Johnny had practically stopped playing professionally. He was no longer living in London, and to some extent out of touch with the Blues scene. He met Jane Mowat, an artist and teacher, the following year, who became his 4th wife a few years later, and this coincided with a desire to play publicly again. He also became more adventurous in trying out musical genres, including some classical training, and introducing the younger generation to blues through workshops in schools. He had begun this in the late 1990s but this gathered momentum in the following years.
He took part as the main singer in a production with Sadlers Wells called ‘Zero’, where his harmonica featured both live and in recorded loops, along with other instruments and choreographed dancers. This, he says, was one of the most terrifying moments in his life!
Not forgetting the harmonica itself, Johnny is a skilled engineer with this small instrument, and has created several different tunings which allow him to play without the bends, well-known to blues players and tricky to achieve well. He has done this with beginners and children in mind, but of course plays both blues and johnny mars harps with equal ease.
He now has his own signature harmonica produced with Seydel and has them for sale.
He lives and continues to work in Somerset, England.
JOHNNY MARS
Biography
Autobiography
IN JOHNNY MARS’ WORDS WITH THE HELP OF JANE MOWAT
These extracts are taken from Johnny’s autobiography, soon to be published. Some of his memories are hard-hitting, moving, or funny, and tell particularly of his growing up in the segregated Southern States of the USA, at a time when coloured folks knew their place (or there would be dire consequences), and stayed in the Coloured sections of town, shopping in the Coloureds shops, and drinking from the Coloured fountains, and only having access to the Coloured hospitals and schools. There was little prospect for them to make something of their lives.
Archive Photos
Joe, Johnny (centre) and Frank Mars
Annie Sue. Johnny's Mother
Frank, Joe and Johnny (right) Mars.
High School Year Book Photo
Johnny Aged 19
Johnny Mars. Outside Kingston, Black Swan NY. 1966.
Blues Legends Tour 1973. Back row, left to right. Piano : Cousin Joe. Sax : Dave Rooks. Drums : John Hunt. Bass : Stan Scrivener. Front row : left to right. Harmonica : Johnny Mars. Guitar : Homesick James. Harmonica : Big John Wrencher. Harmonica : Snooky Pryor. Guitar : Eddie Taylor.
Poster for the Barrelhouse Club.
Photo shoot for the Fire in the City Album.
Johnny with his father, JC, in the 1980s.
BB King and Johnny Mars. Montreux Jazz Festival. 1990s.
Zero. Sadlers Wells, London 2013