Fairmont native and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Johnny Johnson, Chuck Berry’s mentor and later piano player, was the initial inspiration for 1958’s rock and roll hit, “Johnny B. Goode,” which Rolling Stone lists as #7 greatest song of all times even though the piece was about a country boy (originally colored boy, but the wording changed so that it would get radio play) on a guitar.

Johnson had a serious drinking problem. Berry had trouble keeping him in line. When Berry issued an ultimatum that there would be no drinking in the car as the band traveled to the next gig, Johnson stuck his head out the car window to drink. The song’s title reflected Johnson's usual behavior when he was drinking.

It was Johnson, the leader of the Sir John Trio, who gave Berry his start. Johnson’s saxophonist, Alvin Bennett, had a stroke. So Johnson had guitarist Berry sub. Johnson became Berry’s mentor. The pupil became the master and Berry became the face of the group. Over the next 20 years, the two collaborated in the arrangements of many of Berry's songs including "School Days", "Carol" and "Nadine."

Berry also said the song was partly autobiographical. He was born at 2520 Goode Avenue in St. Louis.

Lafayette Leake played piano on this song. The opening guitar riff is a note-for-note copy of the opening single-note solo on Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" (1946), played by guitarist Carl Hogan.

Berry wrote two more songs involving the character Johnny B. Goode, "Bye Bye Johnny" and "Go Go Go", and titled an instrumental album as “Concerto in B. Goode.”

When Chuck Berry was inducted into the first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 23, 1986, he performed "Johnny B. Goode.”

In 1998, Johnson told Doug Donnelly of Monroenews.com that "Johnny B. Goode" was a tribute to him. "I played no part in nothing of Johnny B. Goode," Johnson said. "On other songs, Chuck and I worked together, but not that one. We were playing one night, I think it was Chicago, and he played it. Afterward, he told me it was a tribute to me. He did it on his own. I didn't know nothing about it. It was never discussed."

Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, the star of 1987’s “Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll” movie, said Berry took Johnson’s piano riffs as his own on the guitar. Johnson is the piano man in the film.

The son of a coal miner and a Fairmont Dunbar (all-black) High, Johnson began playing piano in 1928. He joined the United States Marine Corps during World War II where he was a member of Bobby Troup's all serviceman jazz orchestra, The Barracudas. After his return, he moved to Detroit, Illinois and then Chicago, where he sat in with many notable artists, including Muddy Waters and Little Walter.

Berry and Johnson played and toured together until 1973, and Johnson occasionally played with Berry until Johnson's death in 2005 in St. Louis.

Johnson is buried in the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery on the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis.

The Johnnie Johnson Blues & Jazz Festival is held annually in Fairmont, only a few blocks from where Johnson was born.

In 2016 it will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, July 9 in Palatine Park in East Fairmont.

There have been more than 450 glass companies in West Virginia.

Monongah Glass Company was only around from 1904 till it was purchased by Hocking in the early 1930s.

But the glass made by Monongah Glass still is for sale on eBay and other Internet sites, including Cat Lady Kate’s Elegant and Depression Glass at www.CatladykatesGlass.com  The prices are at or close to $200 per glass.

Monongah’s Springtime etch, with center motif of Isidora Duncan dancing with scarves surrounded by swags, was copied by Hocking as its Cameo depressing glass.

Other famous Monongah Glass pieces are the Bo-Peep etch, and the subject is Bo-Peep who lost her sheep in the famous rhyme; Roseland, arching flowers with stem and double wreaths and four ribbon streams that look like arrows; and Secretaries Primrose, five-petaled flowers grouped into bouquets.

The Monongah Glass factory opened in Fairmont in 1904 and, in 1908, made 144,000 pieces every hour! In 1933, the glass plant closed. It was built by William Riley Hickman, who was born in Greene County, Pennsylvania and married Frances Anna Martin.

As they did in the coal miners, fathers brought their children with them to work in the Monongah Glass factor. The dad got $1.75 a day, the children 80 cents to $1.25 depending on their ages.

I’ve never been able to find out why it was called Monongah Glass Company when the plant and home office were in Fairmont. If you have authentic proof, email the URL to me at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com Thank you.

8-foot redheads roamed Marion County

 

"On the earth there once were giants."

  -- Greek poet Homer in 400 B.C.

NBA height red-headed humans lived in Marion County at least 1,600 years ago.

Biblical scholars think a lost tribe from Israel once lived in North America. Evidence exists of 5th-century Irish monks exploring what today is West Virginia.

In the 1850s in Palatine (East Fairmont), excavation workers uncovered two human skeletons more than 7 feet tall.

In 1875 workmen were constructing a bridge near the mouth of Paw Paw Creek at Rivesville uncovered three skeletons with reddish hair clinging to the skulls. They were 8 feet tall.

In September 1882 amateur archaeologist F.M. Fetty and his wife, exploring along White Day Creek, found the remains of another 7-foot human.

In the summer of 1883 James A. Faulkner unearthed a human skeleton in the same area. Dr. Samuel Kramer of Smithtown measured this skeleton at 7 feet 4 inches and said it was  almost 8 feet tall before death.

To read David Cain’s article in “North American Giants,” click on the blue http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/gigantes/MarionCounty.html

Marion County created to avoid long trip to pay taxes

Marion County was created so that Dolly Madison’s cousin, Boaz Fleming, wouldn’t have to travel more than a hundred miles each year from his home to pay his Monongalia County taxes and his brother's Harrison County taxes.

In 1808, Boaz was at a social gathering and complained about the long trip to pay his taxes.

 Dolly’s solution: Create your own county.

Boaz circulated a petition to do that, naming the proposed county Madison County, in honor of Dolly and her husband,  President James Madison. The petition failed to gain sufficient support to be presented to the Virginia General Assembly.

So Boaz focused on creating a town near his farm. In 1819, a road was built from Clarksburg to Morgantown. His farm was about halfway between the two, making a good resting point.

He laid out the town on the west side of the Monongahela River in 1819. It was incorporated on January 19, 1820 as Middletown – either because it was midway between Clarksburg and Morgantown or because Boaz's first wife, Elizabeth Hutchinson, was from Middletown, Delaware.

Middletown was named newly formed Marion County's first county seat on February 18, 1842. At that time, William Haymond, Jr. suggested that the town's name be changed to Fairmont, a contraction of "Fair Mountain,"  because it overlooked the Monongahela River.

The Borough of Fairmont was incorporated in 1843 by the Virginia General Assembly.

Today, 18,704 live in Fairmont, which is 3 miles from Monongah.