Titles by: LASSE JOHANSSON
LASSE JOHANSSON
Lars "Lasse" Johansson started playing fingerpicking guitar in the style of Doc Watson and Merle Travis in the mid-60s. He soon started arranging for the guitar and recorded his first fingerstyle arrangement, Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, in 1969. In 1970 he met Stefan Grossman and signed with Kicking Mule Records to record his duet and solo guitar arrangements of classic ragtime. The first album to be released was March and Two Step-ragtime guitar duets, featuring his duet partner Claes Palmkvist. In the 70's, Lars and Claes went on to record many tunes that appeared in anthologies on the Kicking Mule label. The music was mainly classic piano ragtime from the beginning of the last century. King Porter Stomp, an album of arrangements of "Jelly Roll" Morton's music, was recorded in 1980. Samples of Lars' work now began to appear in the "Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop" collections of fingerstyle guitar arrangements published by Mel Bay. In 1994 Mel Bay published a book entitled The Music of Jelly Roll Morton containing the arrangements from the King Porter Stomp album. Lars then began teaching, and performing, fingerstyle guitar and has continued to do so into the new millennium.