Benjamin Franklin Hotel — Where Lonnie Johnson Worked as Janitor

The Benjamin Franklin Hotel at 834 Chestnut Street in Center City Philadelphia is where Lonnie Johnson — one of the most gifted and historically significant guitarists in the history of American music — worked as a janitor during a long period in the late 1940s and 1950s when his recording career had stalled and the wider music world had largely forgotten him. Johnson had been a dominant figure in jazz and blues recording during the 1920s and 1930s, recording duets with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and influencing virtually every guitarist who came after him. By the postwar period, changing tastes had left him stranded without a commercial audience, and he took whatever work he could find to survive.

Johnson's guitar style — sophisticated, single-string melodic lead playing of extraordinary fluency and feeling — was the direct ancestor of the electric blues lead technique developed by T-Bone Walker and B.B. King, and through them the foundation of virtually all subsequent rock and roll guitar. Robert Johnson, despite sharing only a name, likely absorbed Lonnie's recordings; Django Reinhardt cited him as a primary influence. He had recorded 'Mr. Johnson's Blues' in 1925 and 'Playing with the Strings' in 1928, among hundreds of sides that demonstrated a command of the guitar that was decades ahead of its time. The irony of such a figure working anonymously as a building janitor in Philadelphia is one of the more painful stories in the history of American music.

Johnson was discovered — or rather rediscovered — at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel by a music enthusiast who recognised him, leading to his return to performing and recording during the folk and blues revival of the early 1960s. He recorded for Prestige/Bluesville Records and toured the folk circuit, finally receiving some of the recognition that had eluded him for a decade. The Benjamin Franklin Hotel, a grand 1920s building in Center City Philadelphia, continues to operate and carries no specific memorial to the man who swept its floors while carrying one of the most important legacies in American music.