If at first you don’t succeed, try try again… and then try try again.

Johnny Watson was born in Texas but moved to Los Angeles in 1950 at the age of 15. The city provided the perfect setting for an aspiring musician, especially one who loved to show off on stage. His grandfather had gifted him a guitar a few years earlier, but only with the promise not to play the devil’s music. Unfortunately, young Johnny idolized blues players, and if his idols made the music of the devil, he’d go to hell playing the blues.

Due to his proficient guitar skills, Watson almost immediately found employment playing jump blues and jazz in various bands around Los Angeles. On the side, he also began to record solo singles for small independent labels under the name Johnny “Guitar” Watson, a nickname he gave to himself after watching a movie called Johnny Guitar.

In 1957, Watson released a self-penned single called “Gangster Of Love,” a song in the traditional boasting style of blues. The record failed to chart, but he kept it in his back pocket, and after he found a little success, decided to rerecord the track in 1963 in hopes of gaining a wider audience.

He did not.

But Watson kept the song in his back pocket, and after he started seeing sustained chart success in the mid-70s, he revamped “Gangster Of Love” and released it once again. The single finally hit — albeit a minor hit on the R&B chart — and remains one of Watson’s signature songs (in part because The Steve Miller Band recorded a brief, loose, laidback version in 1968 which garnered some attention and seems to have influenced Watson’s later recording).

Say hello to Johnny, the OG.

The 1963 version:

And the 1978 version: