Lonnie Johnson was born on February 8, 1894, in New Orleans, a city that sits at a particular crossroads of American musical history. He was a citizen of the United States, and his life as a musician would eventually carry him well beyond the state of Louisiana, though New Orleans remained the place of his origins.

Johnson worked as a guitarist, jazz guitarist, violinist, banjoist, singer, and composer — a range of roles that placed him firmly within both the blues and jazz genres. He was a recording artist, and his work across these two traditions gave him a presence in American musical life that drew on the expressive possibilities of multiple instruments. The guitar and the violin sit at some distance from each other in terms of technique and tradition, yet Johnson practiced both, alongside the banjo, making him a musician of considerable instrumental breadth. As a composer, he did not only interpret the work of others but contributed material of his own to the repertoire he performed and recorded.

He used the English language in his work as a singer and recording artist, and his output moved between the blues and jazz worlds without settling exclusively in either. That dual allegiance to two distinct but related genres defined the character of his musical identity, and his standing as both a blues musician and a jazz musician reflects the way those traditions overlapped during the decades of his active career.

Johnson died on June 16, 1970, in Toronto, Canada. The distance between New Orleans, where he was born in 1894, and Toronto, where he died seventy-six years later, marks the geographic span of a life spent working as a musician, composer, and recording artist across the blues and jazz traditions of North America.