For six decades, Johnny Otis played just about every role you can play in the music business: musician (on drums, vibes and piano), singer, songwriter, arranger, bandleader, talent maven, producer, ...

Johnny Otis, an R&B renaissance man and visionary whose passion for the blues, the back beat and racial equality helped ignite a West Coast music style in the late-1940s that made rock and roll ...

In a new biography titled "Midnight at the Barrelhouse –– The Johnny Otis Story" (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), George Lipsitz, professor of Black Studies and sociology at UC Santa Barbara, ...

Otis, who died in 2012, started out leading a big band. Later, as a talent scout, he discovered such performers as Big Mama Thornton, Esther Phillips and Etta James. Originally broadcast in 1989. This ...

Mr. Otis reflects: Johnny Otis, the rock 'n' roll and R&B legend with deep ties to the Bay Area, and to radio, is the subject of a new book, "Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story," by ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Johnny Otis, the "godfather of rhythm and blues" who wrote and recorded the R&B classic "Willie and the Hand Jive" and for decades evangelized black music to white audiences as a ...