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 - 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, ...

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, ...

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 ...

Pioneering rhythm-and-blues singer, songwriter, drummer, bandleader and disc jockey Johnny Otis made the kind of conscious life choice early on that few people have the inclination, or circumstance, ...

Johnny Otis, who has died aged 90, was the Greek-American bandleader who pioneered a style of Rhythm & Blues in California — and launched (or relaunched) the careers of half a dozen R&B superstars in ...

To the world, Johnny Otis was the rhythm-and-blues music pioneer who wrote the classic 1958 hit, "Willie and the Hand Jive." But to the people who knew Otis for the dozen years that he lived and ...

Johnny Otis, the bandleader, pioneering producer, singer, songwriter and radio host who was at the forefront of the rhythm and blues movement, died at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena on ...

Johnny Otis, singer of the 1958 hit "Willie and the Hand Jive", has died in California at the age of 90. Johnny Otis, singer of the 1958 hit "Willie and the Hand Jive", has died in California at the ...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Johnny Otis, singer of the 1958 hit "Willie and the Hand Jive", has died in California at the age of 90. Otis died on Tuesday in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena, his friend ...