The Time Drummer Jellybean Johnson Dead at 69

Garry George “Jellybean” Johnson, drummer of the Prince-affiliated bands the Time and the Family, died on Friday at the age of 69, two days after his birthday.

The Family vocalist Susannah Melvoin paid tribute to her “beautiful brother” Johnson in an Instagram post, which you can see below.

“This band was and is the kind of Family that believed we all rightfully belonged together in love, music and kindness,” Melvoin wrote. She praised Johnson’s guitar skills as well as his drumming chops, saying that “oxygen for him was the inhale and exhale of playing his guitar.”

See Susannah Melvoin’s Tribute to Jellybean Johnson

Jellybean Johnson’s Life and Career

Born on Nov. 19, 1956, in Chicago, Johnson relocated to Minneapolis when he was a child and began learning drums and guitar as a teenager. He played in the Minneapolis funk/R&B group Flyte Tyme, which transformed into the Time in 1981 after Prince added drummer Morris Day (who became the band’s frontman) and guitarist Jesse Johnson.

Although Prince and Day handled the drums on the Time’s first two albums, Johnson began taking a more active recording role beginning with the band’s third album, 1984’s Ice Cream Castle. As a member of the Time and the Family, Johnson helped pioneer the Minneapolis sound, a hybrid of funk-rock, new wave and synth-pop that became inextricably linked to Prince.

READ MORE: Top 10 Prince Rock Songs

Johnson also played a fictionalized version of himself in the 1984 film Purple Rain. After the Time split in 1985, Johnson performed briefly in the Family and enjoyed success as a producer. He coproduced Janet Jackson’s chart-topping hit “Black Cat” and other Top 10 hits including Alexander O’Neal’s “Criticize” and New Edition’s “Crucial.”

Johnson reunited with the Time for the first time in 1990, and the band scored its highest-charting single with the Top 10 hit “Jerk Out.” The Time reunited again in 2008 to perform at the Grammys with Rihanna. They released their final album, Condensate, in 2011 under the name The Original 7ven.

Watch the Time’s ‘Jerk Out’ Music Video

The Hardest Prince Drum Machine Beat Jellybean Johnson Recreated

Johnson was widely praised for his ability to recreate drum machine-programmed tracks on live drums, particularly the complex beat on the Time’s “777-9311.”

“I don’t try to get it perfect,” Johnson told journalist and author Dan Leroy when discussing the song. “Trust me: there’s tons of world class drummers I’ve seen. They hit it, nail it pretty damn close. I never tried to get that close. I tried to get it the Jellybean way. It worked. It fooled a lot of people. I’ve heard people say, ‘Man, nobody can play like Jelly.’ There’s people who can play it better than me, but … at least I fooled you into thinking I did, you know?”