Johnny Otis - drums, piano, bandleader, producer, composer, R&B Legend! Johnny Otis was born December 28, 1921 in Vallejo, California. He grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood in Berkeley, ...

Introduction: There's a riot goin' on -- Central Avenue breakdown -- Double crossing blues -- Willie and the hand jive -- Listen to the lambs -- All night long -- Play Misty for me -- The Watts ...

LOS ANGELES -- 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 ...

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 ...

Otis' Rhythm & Blues Caravan became the first R&B touring road show. Through his nightclub, talent shows and road show, Otis discovered such singers as Esther Phillips, who first worked under the name ...