We just found him, and now he’s dead.

Speaking of dead like jazz, here’s one for ya …

Time was, in our youthful days of getting out and about, we would have known about obscure musicians from all over the place. Other lands, other cultures and even other species didn’t seem to be a barrier when music and alcohol were available, so musical bad boys from a place like Philly certainly would have been on our radar. Unfortunately, radio and the media being what they are now, one has to want to find things when one isn’t bar-hopping and buying music constantly. A case in point is Jef Lee Johnson, a guitarist from yes, Philadelphia, who showed up on our screen just within the last couple of weeks.

After hearing Philly hipsters describe him as “the best guitarist—ever” and “a weirdo genius” we knew he must be our kind of guy. One of the benefits of modern times is the availability of audio and video of damn-near anything, so once we caught wind of this guy—pretty much by chance—we quickly discovered that the praise was no hyperbole. Johnson was everything as advertised: literate, smart, funny and creative as Hell. Occupying a sort of mad educator role in Philly’s jazz scene, his performances were apparently as much lecture and demo as musical performance. His last recording, for instance, was a tribute to Lonnie Johnson, a guitarist often lumped in with more elemental blues players, but one who was an early proponent of the electric guitar, and who was comfortable in jazz and folk settings as much as he was blues.

He was mentored by that much better known Philly jazz figure, McCoy Tyner, and played with the likes of George Duke, but he mostly worked in obscurity. He was certainly unknown here in the Midwest. The saddest part of this story is that Mr. Johnson died on Monday, with just a mention in some Philly circles. Here’s a link to a nice obit at Philly.com. If there’s anything to be learned from this, it’s that jazz usually has operated unnoticed by the rest of society. Before it became an academic exercise, played by conservatory-trained and minded players, it lived and breathed in small, stinky clubs in places like Philly. And Detroit. And Minneapolis. And Dallas. And everywhere there were African-American musicians, or non-blacks who wanted in. The tragedy, one supposes, is that so many great talents wallowed in such modest venues, and to such minimal influence on general culture. And, of course, it’s just plain sad when a man of such obvious gifts dies in relative obscurity.

The good, and we suppose genuinely optimistic, news is that modern media both allowed us to find Jef Lee Johsnon, and to share his music with you. He’s one of those utterly spontaneous players, with ample technique but little regard for staying between the lines. He’s what my technically-gifted and inclined guitarist friends would call “a slob”, but what I would call a brilliant player who values concept and spontaneity over precision. The video above shows him in what was apparently his typical element, playing complex material in a style that’s a mix of Hendrix, James “Blood” Ulmer and George Benson. Yeah, right. No, really. This cat is a bad motherfucker. And just like jazz, he’s dead, damn it.