Big Jack Johnson was a lifelong Clarksdale-area resident and one of the most creative guitarists and lyricists in the blues, a world-renowned musician who kept Red's Blues Club as his home base when not on tour. Heralded by critic Robert Palmer as “possibly the most original bluesman alive,” he pushed Delta blues in new directions with electric, innovative instrumental playing and topical songs about AIDS, war, domestic violence, abortion, Hurricane Katrina, and the 1994 ice storm that paralyzed Clarksdale. His CD "Memphis Barbecue Sessions" won a W. C. Handy Award in 2003, and he also received several Living Blues Awards. Although he officially used July 30, 1940, as his birthdate, census evidence shows he was actually born in 1939, the son of Ellis and Pearl Johnson on Van Savage's Plantation near Lambert; his father, a fiddler, and the country and blues music he heard on the radio were his earliest inspirations. After moving to Lyon and then Clarksdale, he worked with Earnest Roy, Sr., C. V. Veal & the Shufflers, and Johnny Dugan & the Esquires, but became best known as a member of the Jelly Roll Kings with Frank Frost and Sam Carr, playing and recording with them off and on from 1962 through the 1990s, sometimes joined by Little Jeno Tucker or James “Super Chikan” Johnson. Nicknamed “the Oil Man,” he drove a truck for Rutledge Oil Co. before turning to music full time, and also did farm work and landscaping, while reports credited him with boxing and bear wrestling. For his own band, B. J. & the Oilers, he recruited younger local musicians including Terry “Big T” Williams, though he often used Pennsylvania-based musicians and others while touring the East Coast, the rest of the country, Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan. He appeared in the 1992 film "Deep Blues" and the 1991 video "Juke Joint Saturday Night," recorded for the Earwig, M.C., Rooster Blues, and Fat Possum labels, later released his own CDs backed by the Cornlickers, and at times operated the Untouchables, Black Fox, and Possum Trot nightspots with his wife Angenette. In his final years he performed regularly at Red's for his longtime friend Cornelius “Red” Paden, and after his death on March 14, 2011, a huge throng filled the Pinnacle at Coahoma Community College for his funeral before he was buried at McLaurin Memorial Garden cemetery on Highway 61.