14 Facts About Bob Johnston

Bob Johnston's grandmother, Mamie Jo Adams, was a songwriter, as was his mother Diane Johnston.

From 1956 to 1961, Bob Johnston recorded a few rockabilly singles under the name Don Bob Johnston.

Bob Johnston married songwriter Joy Byers with whom he began to collaborate.

In later years, Bob Johnston claimed that songs still credited to his wife Joy Byers were actually co-written, or solely written by himself.

Bob Johnston has cited old "contractual reasons" for this situation.

Bob Johnston began working for Columbia Records in New York, where he began producing Patti Page and the Pozo-Seco Singers.

Bob Johnston produced three of Cohen's albums, toured with him and composed music to the Cohen lyric "Come Spend the Morning", recorded by both Lee Hazlewood and Engelbert Humperdinck.

Bob Johnston created an atmosphere in the studio that really invited you to do your best, stretch out, do another take, an atmosphere that was free from judgment, free from criticism, full of invitation, full of affirmation.

Dissatisfied with his salary earnings as a Columbia staff producer, particularly after several hit albums which earned him no royalties, Bob Johnston became an independent producer, most successfully with Lindisfarne on Fog on the Tyne, which topped the British album chart in 1972.

In 1979, Bob Johnston produced an album with the San Francisco band Reggae Jackson, titled Smash Hits that featured Jimmy Foot, Cheryl Lynn, Kenneth Nash, and Wayne Bidgell.

In 1985, Bob Johnston produced an album Walking In The Shadow by the San Francisco band The Rhyth-O-Matics, for engineer Fred Catero's newly formed Catero label.

Towards the end of his life Bob Johnston returned to working with fresh talent including singer-songwriters Natalie Pinkis, Eron Falbo, and indie rock band Friday's Child.

The final project Bob Johnston worked on was Evolution: Live at the Saxon Pub which he co-produced for Austin band Hector Ward and The Big Time in 2015, which was released in 2016.

Bob Johnston was in a memory facility and a hospice in Nashville for the last week of his life before dying on August 14,2015.