THE KIND OF GIRL YOU READ ABOUT
FROM DECEMBER 2018 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX
After a long life onstage Taborah Johnson has become an activist for young and female performers
Taborah Johnson saw it all singing with the Mary Jane Girls for funk superfreak Rick James, and knows how to tell it, too
Taborah “Tabby” Johnson’s stories are perfect. Like all great ones, they sound unrehearsed and casual. Each begins with a careful hook and ends neatly, with all the hallmarks of a professional’s. The stories are wild, and the characters that appear in them unexpected: drinking tea with Lena Horne, changing diapers with Julie Andrews, what happened the night John Belushi died.
And, of course, there’s Tabby’s friendship and professional relationship with Rick James. Tabby was one of the Mary Jane Girls, James’s backup singers. She met the musician when he fled to Toronto from Buffalo after being called up for the Vietnam War, and she performed and toured with him between 1979 and 1982. She recalls a pre-fame Dave Chappelle witnessing Rick James yelling at her at the American Music Awards, his retelling of that incident transforming into Chappelle Show’s infamous “I’m Rick James, bitch!”
But the stories that are even more compelling are about growing up in Toronto in the ’60s and ’70s as the daughter of a white mother and an African-American father. Her parents met in Switzerland and moved to Canada when her father was offered a job. The family lived in St. Thomas, Ont., before moving to Toronto, where Tabby attended Swansea Public School. The Johnsons then moved to Gormley Avenue, where Tabby grew up on a street that was a microcosm of the progressive social changes that were starting to take place in Toronto and elsewhere. She entered the theatre world at age 11 on Ed Mirvish’s stages, and performed alongside Toronto heavyweights, including Pentti Glan, who drummed for Alice Cooper and Lou Reed. Here she talks about her wild life on the road, and at home, where Count Basie was just another uncle, pounding on the family piano.
ON HOW HER PARENTS MET
“My father spoke several languages: Italian, German, some French, a little Russian. He’d fought in the war with fixed bayonets. He’d fought in the war for freedom. He came back [to the U.S.], where they give you your education, and [he’s] surrounded by people who hate Black people. And my dad went, ‘Fuck that.’ Pawned his two Purple Hearts, his two sharpshooter medals and went back to Italy and ended up in Switzerland, where it was the first time he had been treated as a man. And he became highly educated.
He fell in love with this white woman, my mother. My mother had a cotillion, went to school with the Bouviers in Manhattan, and then to the ultimate finishing school in Lucerne – needlepoint and piano-playing. When my mother came back from Switzerland and announced she was going to marry this Black man, they put my mom in Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, because they thought she must be crazy. My father, with the help of a Black custodian, rescued Mom. Dad was there in a cab and they went to the docks and got on a boat and went back to Switzerland.”
ON GROWING UP ON GORMLEY AVENUE, NEAR UPPER CANADA COLLEGE
“Gormley was this very cool little street that was a division between the ‘We have it all – fuck you’ and the poor people on the next street over.
Jon Hendricks [from Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and The Manhattan Transfer] stayed a lot at our place. They were uncles. I remember Count Basie – now I know he’s Count Basie, but at the time he was just an uncle – banging on the piano saying, ‘Girl, hit this note!’ [sings ‘Na, na, na, na, na, na!’] And they were always just an extra person at the table. They were Black, so of course they’re family.”
ON THE FIRST TIME TABBY MET RICK JAMES
“I was doing a cabaret show at Second City upstairs, on Lombard Street [near King and Jarvis]. And for some reason, Rick came to see the show. I think somebody I was going out with may have brought him. All I remember is him sliding down the firepole and me thinking, ‘Who is this madman?’ He had a short afro and really, really bad teeth. And he invited me to come to this after-hours club called the Moonstone. It was on Avenue Road across from the old church. I had to get up early the next morning because I had rehearsal. That was my life.”
Johnson (far right) with fellow Mary Jane Girls members Joanne “Jojo” McDuffie (left) and Lisa Sarna (centre).
ON DRESSING UP AS A MARIJUANA JOINT
“The Mary Jane Girls were going to be dancing joints in Fort Worth, Texas, for Rick’s show. The costumes arrive seven minutes before we’re supposed to go on. It was one of Walt Disney’s people who had designed these joints. We’re back on the side stage, trying to figure out how to get into the costumes. They were done up the back and they had little holes with a little lever inside. The smoke was supposed to come out when you pulled the lever. Except that it didn’t.
We couldn’t do any of our great dance moves. We’re putting them on and we’re standing there and now Lisa [Sarner, another of the Mary Jane Girls] is crying and hyperventilating and we’re about to go onstage. And Rick’s yelling at me – ‘Well you’re an actress, you’re in theatre. Go out!’ – and literally pushing me out. And all I can do is penguin-walk out there. There’s a riser where there’s never been a riser. Well, I can’t lift my leg or anything so I just did my infamous ‘Shuffle off to Buffalo’ step, which I’d perfected in Las Vegas doing Jesus Christ Superstar.
After the show, which was a nightmare, I discovered the reason why the riser was on the stage. As the riggers were hanging the lights, somebody fell and died. There wasn’t enough time to clean up the stage properly, so they just put a riser over the remains and blood and shit. Welcome to showbiz.”
ON BEING MENTORED BY LENA HORNE
“I was at the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel and I kept hearing this woman crying. And so finally, after about three days, I just went and knocked on the door and said, ‘Yo, can I help you, what’s up?’ It was Lena Horne. Her son had died and she was there trying to pull herself together. I had tea and toast with Lena Horne every morning for about 10 days. And she taught me what it’s like to be a light-skinned Black woman in Hollywood. She was my mentor for a number of years.”
ON THE NIGHT JOHN BELUSHI DIED
“When John Belushi died, they had been at my house in L.A., on Sweetzer [Avenue]. I’d come back from the desert, which was my go-to place when we were off the road. We’d been lightly partying – I can only hang for so long and then I’m just tired. Belushi had his bungalow at the Chateau Marmont. I got a call saying, ‘We can’t wake John up,’ and I said, ‘Well, put him in the recovery position.’ That’s all I could think of to say. I didn’t know he was fucking dead.
I blame his management. They’re the ones who sign the cheques.”
ON INSPIRING THAT DAVE CHAPPELLE SKIT
“Dave Chappelle was [one of the seat fillers at the 1982 American Music Awards]. They hold the seats during rehearsals. I didn’t know it was Dave Chappelle. So I do my fake dancing, the camera gets their shot before we go live.
I had done something and Rick had gone on about ‘You gotta pay attention to me.’ And then he went, ‘I’m Rick James, bitch!’ Later, Dave Chappelle does this bit on [Chappelle’s Show’s] ‘I’m Rick James, bitch!’ It wasn’t even that many years later. I remember people calling me and laughing, and I’m like, ‘What, what?’ I refused to see it. Now I’ve seen it on YouTube, and it is hilarious.”
ON HER SOCIAL ACTIVISM
“I appreciate Toronto. I appreciate Canada a lot. And it’s worth fighting for. I became a social activist through my union work, I lobby for ACTRA. I was national councillor and a local councillor [Tabby served on the executive council of ACTRA’s Toronto and national chapters, and was an ACTRA Toronto Child Advocate]. I was instrumental in being part of this team that passed a law [Bill 17, Protecting Child Performers Act, 2015] in the Ontario government to protect all working minors, union or not. I am proud about working as a voice for women without voices. That kind of work seemed to reinvigorate my love of my craft. The powers of industry and commerce, we can’t vote for them. And yet they hold sway over everything. It’s worth the struggle.”