Big John

Big John Patton: Certain Feeling

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
January 24, 2018

Big John Patton wasn't big. Playing the organ-combo circuit in late 1961 and early '62, a club owner began calling him “Big Bad John." The name was inspired by Jimmy Dean's record, Big Bad John, which was released in September of that year and went to #1 on Billboard's pop chart in early November. Patton told an interviewer he resisted the name at first but soon came to like it. It's unclear whether he deleted the word “bad" or Blue ...
read more