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MMHF honors Jim Johnson on Legacy Day

NEW ULM -- The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame honored musician, Jim Johnson on Saturday as part of its Legacy series.

The program was Chapter Two of Legacy Month at the Hall in New Ulm. The series honors Minnesota musicians who have died.

Johnson was the founder and guitarist of The Underbeats, a Brooklyn Center and North Minneapolis band that became the band Gypsy.

The Underbeats formed in 1962 in a basement in Brooklyn Center.

The original lineup was Jim Johnson on guitar, Russ Hagen on guitar and vocals, Doni Larson on bass and Bob “Duke” Duane on drums. The band played its first public job at the Chisago City Civic Center in 1963.

In 1964 the band cut its first 45 called, Foot Stompin.

The song was originally by The Flares. It became a local hit. The band played ballrooms including the Medina Ballroom, the Prom Center and the Roof Garden at Arnolds Park.

Johnson required long practices.

“Good enough isn’t good enough. You have to be fantastic,” Johnson said in the Hall’s documentary.

By 1965 there were an estimated 350 to 500 Minnesota bands that could play a four hour dance. The Underbeats were one of the bands that worked every weekend.

In September 1966 Johnson was drafted.

He served in Vietnam until September 1968. Before he left, he hired two replacements to keep the band working, guitarist Wally Walstead and James Walsh on keyboards and vocals from The Hot Half Dozen.

Walsh was known as "Owl" since high school. He played keyboards and sang high tenor. He was born in 1948.

When Johnson returned from Vietnam in late 1968 he told the band it had to go national to grow.

“We had to go national to grow,” Johnson said.

In November 1968 the Underbeats left Minnesota in a converted orange school bus and arrived in Los Angeles. The band moved into a house in Sun Valley.

Manager Steve Freeman got the band work at Gazzari’s and as house band at the Whisky a Go Go on Sunset Strip from September 1969 to April 1971.

The band lived in a duplex in Los Angeles that shared a property line with Leno and Rosemary LaBianca’s house, according to the documentary Gypsy: Rock and Roll Nomads.

The film said the band was playing a gig at Gazzari’s on Sunset Boulevard when the couple was murdered by the Manson Family in August 1969.

In spring 1969 the band changed its name. Larson looked at the band’s living situation and said, “Look at us, we are living like gypsies.” The band became Gypsy.

The band signed to Metromedia and released a self titled double album in August 1970. The album included Gypsy Queen Part 1 and Dead and Gone. The band played the Atlanta Pop Festival in August 1970. The band released In The Garden in 1971, Antithesis in 1972 and Unlock The Gates in 1973.

Johnson stayed in Los Angeles to write after the original lineup split. Two songs he wrote, Magic in My Life and Don’t Stop For Nothin, were recorded by The Fifth Dimension and included on the album Earthbound in 1975.

The group sang Magic in My Life on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Merv Griffin Show and Dinah Shore.

“That’s it, I’m made,” Johnson said about hearing his song on the record.

He took his girlfriend to Las Vegas to celebrate.

“I took my girlfriend down to Vegas to celebrate and two weeks later, the Fifth Dimension broke up,” Johnson said.

He built an eight track studio in his garage in Encino with drummer Stan Kipper and wrote music for films.

A friend played Ray Charles a Johnson song called Too Hard To Love You. Charles called him.

“Jim? I heard this song. Will you come down and play on it for me,” Johnson said Charles said.

Johnson said, “On one condition, that you don’t be hollering at me. I heard about you.”

As Johnson left the studio, Charles grabbed his wrist.

“Johnson, attack. Attack. Attack,” Johnson said Charles said.

Johnson said Charles meant to attack the notes, to play hard and with confidence and not hold back.

He also tried to get bandmate Enrico “Rico” Rosenbaum back into music in the late 1970s.

On September 10, 1979, Johnson and Kipper were rehearsing when Johnson got the call that Rosenbaum had died by suicide.

“That was the end of that rehearsal,” Johnson said.

Friends gathered at the funeral in Highland Park.

“Every 60s rock and roller in the Twin Cities was there, like the old dance halls,” friends said.

In 1993 Johnson left Los Angeles and returned to Minneapolis. A new version of The Underbeats formed and played ballrooms and festivals. He played jobs with the James Walsh led version of Gypsy. He formed a blues band called Calvin James and Bad Influence and released a CD, It Ain’t Over, in 2003.

Ray Charles recorded Johnson’s song Too Hard To Love You in 1988. Johnson received the Bill Diehl Award in 2016. The Underbeats were inducted into the Rock Country Hall of Fame at Medina Ballroom in 2004.

Jim Johnson died of esophageal cancer in hospice care at St. Therese of New Hope on Sept. 26, 2019. He was 76.

James “Owl” Walsh led The James Walsh Gypsy Band after Gypsy. He toured and recorded. He died of congestive heart failure in Minneapolis on March 4, 2023. He was 74.

Two people who gathered Saturday were Tere Walsh, widow of musician James “Owl” Walsh, keyboardist and vocalist for The Underbeats and later Gypsy, and her stepdaughter Gina Walsh Ziesmer of Lindstrom.

Walsh Ziesmer said she lives in Lindstrom and that she and Tere Walsh drove to New Ulm to support Legacy Month and to submit Hall of Fame nomination forms for Gypsy.

Legacy month continues at the Hall of Fame. On Friday October 9 the hall will remember Johnny Helget, concertina player, bandleader, teacher and showman from New Ulm. On Saturday October 10 the hall will remember Charles Schoen. The hall will present the legacy film The Music Lives On. Programs are 10 am til 2 pm at the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, 27 N Broadway St, New Ulm. Admission is seven dollars, free to members.