Soul Great Syl Johnson Finds 'justice' At Last

Syl Johnson is sitting in the South Side offices of his Numero Group record label and examining a 40-year-old portrait of himself in a rare moment when he wasn't playing a gig, running a recording session or working a day job. The face in the photo is partially shaded, slightly ominous, deadly serious, staring down at the camera as if to say, "I've got better things to do than stand around posing for photographs."

"That's a guy who didn't drink, who didn't smoke, who didn't chase women, who was never very far from music," Johnson says when asked about his younger self. "I was good. Like Obama - he was a community organizer, right? - I knew how to organize. You couldn't organize and be a whiskey head."

The organizer appears on the cover of "Syl Johnson: Complete Mythology" (Numero Group), a four-CD, six-LP box set that is in many ways the Chicago label's crowning achievement, and quite possibly Johnson's as well. It documents the earliest portion of his career in Chicago as a quadruple-threat singer-musician-songwriter-producer who released quality music at a steady rate but never quite ascended to star level. Johnson trafficked in every style of the day, presaging some trends, piggybacking on others. "I've got to get over," Johnson sang on a 1965 single, and he worked all the angles: soul and funk, but also blues, pleading ballads, a hint of pop, protest music.

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