Lord Doctor

Description

Lord Doctor is the solo debut album by the American singer, songwriter, and blues guitarist Mike Johnson (October 11, 1945 – February 9, 2013) of The Exkursions fame, independently released on Freedom Light Records in 1972. An abbreviated version was later re-issued as The Last Battle by Creative Sound, featuring new cover art.

Johnson had previously headed up the heavy blues-rock trio The Exkursions, providing both lead chops and vocals. Lord Doctor finds him once again with a band, but in a somewhat quieter context. The 6 minute «Cause And Effect» and 8 minute «Pride» open the album in more of a progressive classic rock direction, the latter track with an aggressive synthesizer and drum intro reminiscent of The Moody Blues. Acoustic ballads are aplenty on this outing: «The World Rejoiced», «Lovin’ Me Lovin’ You», «The Old Captain» and the title cut. Still a good deal of electric action – more subdued but with a good strong underground feel. And «That Train Keeps Rollin» certainly rocks with confidence, tapping back into that old bluesy Exkursions style. Country edge on «Your Friends Keep Callin» and the Jew’s-harp twangin’ «Happy». One of them all-around Jesus music classics. [Ken Scott, The Archivist, 4th edition]

LP tracklist:

Side One
A1. “Cause And Effect” – 6:00
A2. “Pride” – 8:12
A3. “The World Rejoiced” – 3:25
A4. “That Train Keeps Callin'” – 3:59

Side Two
B1. “Lovin’ Me Lovin’ You” – 4:32
B2. “The Old Captain” – 3:12
B3. “Your Friends Keep Callin'” – 2:53
B4. “Lord Doctor” – 4:52
B5. “Happy” – 2:19

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Mike Johnson (Michael Craig Johnson: October 11, 1946 – February 9, 2013) was born in Chicago so he was born into the blues. In the early 1960s he performed with Michael Bloomfield and was a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

After attending Bible college for a year, Mike joined forces with John Ankerberg and would take his blues-rock style of guitar playing to twenty-eight campuses in the Chicago area through Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Mike’s band The Exkursions would play at hundreds of college campuses and coffee houses across the country for the next two years including an outreach through the Billy Graham organization.

After The Exkursions, Mike took to the road as a solo artist, traveling the country with his family and self-producing three albums, signing with major CCM label NewPax records and recording three highly popular albums, became a staff song writer for Gary Paxton‘s company with over 135 published songs appearing on fourteen albums by artists including the Oak Ridge Boys and Vern Gosdin.

Johnson’s also known as the first contemporary Christian artist to use concerts for Compassion International to present the needs of Third World children. Thanks to his help and vision, there are over one million children in twenty-six countries being sponsored today.

Compassion International’s needy children have been gaining sponsors from Christian concert audiences since 1977. At that time, Christian artist Michael Johnson and Compassion’s director agreed that Johnson should make a presentation for Compassion at six experimental concerts. Fifty concerts and 50 presentations later, Compassion hired Lareau Anderson to expand the program and handle the concert work. [An excerpt from the article “Music & Mercy – A Look Beyond the Lyrics”, written by Karen Robberson and featured in the May 1983 issue of CCM Magazine.]