Nowadays, Ben Johnson can be found spending time getting to know others at the Waffle House, performing duties as a licensed minister, playing the organ at Poplar Springs Baptist Church or sharing his love of music with children at school cultural arts events. “I’ve done a lot of things people would be surprised at,” Johnson said. The jovial man once toured the world as one of the top banjo performers, sharing his talents with Jackie Gleason, Johnny Cash and Jimmy Carter.
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Ben Johnson
By Samantha Sinclair
Staff Writer
GUMLOG – Nowadays, Ben Johnson can be found spending time getting to know others at the Waffle House, performing duties as a licensed minister, playing the organ at Poplar Springs Baptist Church or sharing his love of music with children at school cultural arts events.
“I’ve done a lot of things people would be surprised at,” Johnson said.
The jovial man once toured the world as one of the top banjo performers, sharing his talents with Jackie Gleason, Johnny Cash and Jimmy Carter.
He still performs – in fact, he and other musicians plan to resume Saturday concerts in downtown Tallulah Falls on July 3 – but he focuses on teaching others how to play musical instruments at his studio in a cabin along Gumlog Road in Martin.
Over the years, he’s taught thousands of people how to play an instrument – he has a shelf filled with just binders of students’ names and contact information.
He said he teaches to share what he’s learned over the years. The greatest source of self-satisfaction he’s had is playing music, and he wants to share that feeling with as many people as he can.
“It’s hard for a banjo player to be sad. If everyone can be as happy as me, we’ll be in good shape,” Johnson said. “That’s something about music – It’s God’s gift to us.”
Johnson had never held a musical instrument in his hands, or had really had any kind of music education before 1959.
His father was a prize fighter, ranked seventh in the world in 1939, and was a paratrooper.
Johnson described his father as very athletic and tough, but sweet as a father.
When Johnson was a high school senior in Clarkston near Stone Mountain, he was on the football team, and his goals were to play football, as a result of his father’s athletic influences.
Then, he broke his leg. While he was in the hospital recovering, he saw a ukelele in the Sears Roebuck catalog, and it changed the direction of his life.
He got that ukelele, and learned how to play, with some help from two teachers at school who knew how to play.
“I learned as much as I could on that thing,” Johnson said.
Then, between high school and college, he was cleaning his grandmother’s attic and found an old banjo that needed repairs.
He sold his 1950 Oldsmobile — he decided he needed a banjo more than a car for college — and used the money to fix up the instrument.
It was a Gibson tenor banjo once owned by either his father or uncle — they could not remember when asked. He tried for two years to play that banjo like a five-string.
“I wanted to play like Earl Scruggs,” Johnson said.
The banjo made it hard to play like Scruggs, though.
At the time, Johnson didn’t know there were different types of banjos.
(There are three main types, Johnson explained — tenor, five-string, and plectrum.)
A fellow student at college, Hal Hayes, told him he needed a five-string banjo to play the way he was trying to. He purchased a five-string banjo that weekend, and was able to play it easily.
He took lessons from Perry Bechtel, a 1920s banjo star who was teaching in Atlanta at the time.
Bechtel taught him the value of music theory, and told him he needed a formal education in the subject.
Johnson didn’t return to school until 1970 when he entered DeKalb College’s music program. There were 69 students in the program, and Johnson was one of the only two who graduated.
Between various jobs like working at a sheet metal plant or as a milkman, he did a lot of performing to lift others’ spirits at first by playing benefits or at a children’s hospital.
Then, he got his first real paying job.
“I was terrified,” he said. “Then I learned if you don’t play, you don’t eat.”
He played at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor starting in 1961, and got to play at the Imperial Hotel’s Bonnie and Clyde Club.
His career kicked off after winning second place nationally in one of Gleason’s talent search competitions in 1967.
The competition was held in one of the big hotels in Atlanta.
“Being an old country boy, I thought that was really something,” Johnson said.
An opera singer won the competition, but went on to watch Johnson perform at Shakey’s after the show, listening to him play all night.
“He liked banjo music, evidently,” Johnson said. “All the kids thought that was really something.”
From 1967-70, he toured the midwest with piano player Don Gilbert — a jolly guy who knew his music right and left, Johnson said.
Their agent, Ray Auler, was well respected as he got Al Capone to help keep musicians safe in the 1920s.
After the tour, Johnson went on to perform as the main banjo player for the band at the Assembly Line Club in Charleston, S.C., then went back to Atlanta where he formed the group the Golden Banjos and played at conventions.
He later formed a group called The Pioneers with Ron Biesel and their two sons.
Over the years, more musicians joined the group.
The Pioneers performed at several Atlanta-area events over the years, including many shows at Betty Talmadge’s Lovejoy Plantation, where they performed for Coretta Scott King, Rosalynn Carter, Lady Bird Johnson, and B.J. Thomas.
Johnson also performed at campaign events and at the Carter Library for Jimmy Carter, and at the Omni Center for Ronald Reagan.
He played “I’ll Fly Away” at the funeral service for broadcast journalist Ray Moore.
Over the years, he did more touring, headlining shows in California, Michigan and New York, and even toured Japan in 1995 with The Pioneers, playing at the Great American Fair in a mall there.
“It’s been a wonderful time,” Johnson said.
One of his most memorable performances was one for A.L. Williams and Associates at Calloway Gardens. Williams had all of his agents put money on the stage until the stage was covered in money.
“That’s one thing I’ll never forget - all that money,” Johnson said.
Johnson made more money than he ever thought he would playing the banjo.
Johnson always wanted a gold-plated banjo and a red Cadillac, and ended up with two gold-plated banjos and a white Cadillac.
He bought a house and farm in Franklin County in 1987, although he had visited the area and his family had property in the area since the 1960s.
He feels he’s linked to the county — his grandfather (a doctor) was Ben Franklin Johnson Sr., his father was Ben Franklin Johnson Jr., he is Benjamin Franklin Johnson III, his son is Ben Franklin Johnson IV, his grandson is Ben Franklin Johnson V, and his daughter was born on Ben Franklin’s birthday.
“So we had to be in Franklin County,” Johnson said.
In 1995, he ran for an open seat on the county commission, and served the county in the position for one term.
“That was enough,” Johnson said.
He wanted to do what he could to help people, but learned politics was vicious.
When one person was set to physically attack him, Johnson had to show him that his father taught him how to take care of himself.
His white beard was instrumental in a few roles — he performed as Grandpappy Pickens at Stone Mountain Park from 2000-08, as a banjo-playing Santa Claus in malls from 1997 to 2019, and as Old Man Paddler in three Sugar Creek Gang movies from 2004-05.
Johnson started the Southland Banjoramas at Stone Mountain Park, and when the park opened Crossroads Village, he was cast as Grandpappy Pickens.
He admitted he is not a movie star — the job requires a lot of sitting around and waiting, and he needs to stay active. Some of the music he wrote was used in the Sugar Creek Gang films.
He has written more than 30 songs including “Bluegrass Christmas” and “Childhood Memories,” the latter of which he played at his high school reunion.
He is currently working on writing music for poetry written by a church member.
He has never sat down to count all the instruments he owns and knows how to play — in addition to the ukelele, banjo and organ, he can play and teach piano, fiddle, bass, dulcimer, saxophone, trumpet, clarinet and guitar — but knows he owns at least 30 instruments.
He has even placed two years in a row for playing dulcimer in the state’s Official State Champion Fiddler’s Convention at the Georgia Mountain Fall Festival.
His favorite instrument remains the banjo, though.
“I’m going to play my banjo until I kick the bucket,” Johnson said.
To watch a clip of Johnson playing his banjo, check out the Franklin County Citizen Leader on Facebook.