Jellybean Johnson, the Minneapolis musician and producer who was the drummer for the Prince-affiliated funk-rock group The Time, has died. He was 69.
His cause of death is unknown. TMZ first reported Johnson’s passing, noting that he died Friday night (Nov. 21) according to a statement obtained by his family.
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Prince recruited Johnson (real name Garry George Johnson), who was self-taught on drums and guitar, in 1981 for The Time, an act born out of the city’s Flyte Tyme. They’d known each other since their high school years in Minneapolis.
“The drums are physical and violent for me while the guitar is spiritual and emotional,” Johnson said in a 2018 interview with Australian Musician. He also quipped to the publication, “When you live here in the cold, you stay in [in] the winter time and you learn how to play.”
As a member of The Time — and later, Prince’s The Family — Johnson helped establish the funk-rock, new wave and synth-pop hybrid that became known as the Minneapolis Sound. He appeared as a fictionalized version of himself in 1984’s Academy Award-winning Purple Rain and as himself in 1990’s Graffiti Bridge.
The Time had five top 10 hits on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in the ’80s and early ’90s (when the chart was called Hot Black Singles), including “777-9311,” “Jungle Love” and “Jerk-Out,” which reached No. 1 in 1990.
Johnson is also known for his work as a producer, with Janet Jackson‘s 1990 Hot 100 No. 1 “Black Cat” among his credits — and he was an in-demand session musician.
Sheila E., a longtime friend and a frequent collaborator with Prince, remembered Johnson in an emotional post on Facebook Saturday morning, which she shared “with a heavy heart.”
“My dear friend Jellybean passed away a couple of hours ago,” Sheila E. wrote. “We are devastated by this news. I’m praying for his family and all the kids. He was a kind human being, extremely talented and funny. He had a great sense of humor and [was] an awesome guitar player.”
Directing her words toward her late friend, she added, “Yesterday was your birthday, I forgot to call you and I’m so sorry. I love u bean. Rest in peace and power.”
“I’m absolutely heartbroken!” The Family vocalist Susannah Melvoin wrote on Instagram. “My beautiful brother Jellybean Johnson has passed. This band was and is the kind of Family that believed we all rightfully belonged together in love, music and kindness. Jellybean was the master of loving you like no brother could! My big brother, who watched over me and anyone who he loved!”
Melvoin’s note continued: “I met him when I was 19 years old and he was already a seasoned musical savant at 28. He’d been in the Time and was masterfully put into a band that became what we lovingly and rightfully call the family. He went from being behind the drums to playing guitar in this band because he was a guitar player first and drummer second. Oxygen for him was the inhale and exhale of playing his guitar. I can barely get this out….his children and family members need our support and love. Please send it their way.”
“May you rest in all that is light and graceful,” she said to Johnson.
Johnson performed with The Time and Rihanna at the Grammy Awards in 2008, a performance that had him playing the drums to a click track. After being a career musician with his “own click track for 30, 40 years,” Johnson said it was difficult to pivot — “If you go back and watch that performance, it came off flawless, but, man, that week of practice was hell,” he said with a laugh, in a 2024 interview with Dancing to the Drum Machine author Dan Leroy.
“The guys in The Time always trusted me, as far as tempos and all that kind of stuff,” explained Johnson. “But there were a few times, like when I played the Grammys … I remember one time back in ’08, man, I played the Grammys, and Rihanna was on there with [The Time]. And she was just getting huge, and she had that ‘Umbrella’ song … And she had dancers, and she was doing this thing with us, and it was gonna be part Minneapolis, part her. She’s gonna be integrated with us — which means with me being the only drummer, I had to play to a click track. I struggled. I’m not gonna lie. I called every hotshot drummer, young drummers that I know, all my top drum friends. I mean, how do y’all do this? Because some guys, especially studio guys, they learn how to do that. Just deal with click tracks and all that kind of stuff. And I didn’t. I never had to really do that.”
He returned to the Grammys stage in 2017 and 2020 as part of tributes to Prince.
Johnson co-founded the non-profit Minneapolis Sound Museum in 2021, with the goal of preserving the history, culture and legacy of the Minneapolis Sound.
In 2022, he was awarded a Soul Train Lifetime Achievement Award with The Time.
