lit a candle 2h ago98 years old. still asking about fingerpicking days before the end.
Their story
Theodore "Ted" Johnson (August 6, 1928 to October 10, 2026) was a Chicago folk musician and teacher who was there on the night the Old Town School of Folk Music opened its doors in December 1957, and who stayed connected to the school for nearly seven decades, first as one…
Theodore "Ted" Johnson (August 6, 1928 to October 10, 2026) was a Chicago folk musician and teacher who was there on the night the Old Town School of Folk Music opened its doors in December 1957, and who stayed connected to the school for nearly seven decades, first as one of its earliest instructors and later as a student of Irish fiddle. A guitarist, banjo player and singer who learned by ear, he was also a scholar of American literature, a textbook editor, a founder of the Chicago Sacred Harp Singers and a composer of shape note tunes that were published in The Sacred Harp. He died in Chicago at the age of 98.
Johnson was born and raised in Evanston, Illinois, the son of Donald and Kathryn Johnson. He sang in his high school choir and, after finishing a B.A. at Loyola University Chicago, spent about a year traveling around Europe. Back home, his brother Don, an engineer working in Colorado, reintroduced him to skiing, and the brothers fell in love with the back country of the Western mountains in an era when skiers reached remote slopes by dog sled and stayed in old miners' cabins. Johnson spent a stretch as a ski bum in Aspen, and it was on the slopes, he later said, that his brother taught him to yodel.
Returning to Chicago, he was drawn into the city's growing folk scene. He was a regular at the Gate of Horn, the downtown club often described as the first nightclub in the country devoted to folk music, where he met performers such as Odetta, Josh White, Theodore Bikel, Peggy Seeger, Ella Jenkins and a young guitarist named Frank Hamilton. Johnson's friend Dawn Greening, who was hosting Hamilton at her home in Oak Park, arranged for him to give guitar lessons in her living room. Johnson was among the students, and so was the singer Win Stracke, who, as Johnson often recalled, leaned over after a lesson and announced that he was going to build a school around Hamilton.
That school, the Old Town School of Folk Music, opened at 333 West North Avenue in Old Town on December 1, 1957, with Studs Terkel among the guests and Big Bill Broonzy on stage. Johnson was in the founding class and became the school's second teacher after Hamilton, the first new instructor hired as the school expanded. The Old Town School's group method, in which ordinary people with no conservatory training learned songs together and then jammed after class, matched his own belief that music belonged to everyone. Over more than 40 years he taught guitar and banjo there, and in the late 1990s, when Jewel and LeAnn Rimes brought yodeling back to the pop charts, he taught yodeling too. With Hamilton he sought out master musicians from Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods to share their music with the school's community, and he took part in neighborhood outreach such as Project Upbeat, which in 1970 gave free guitars and lessons to 50 children in Old Town.
The school also gave him his family. He met Marcia Klein there in 1963, and their first date was singing together at the Drake Hotel, where he had a gig. They married in 1966 and for years earned part of their living singing and teaching guitar and folk music, including through Michigan State University's continuing education program and Loyola's fine arts department. As a duo, Ted and Marcia Johnson recorded the LP Day Is Breakin' in My Soul, and their performances of "Old Paint" and "Erie Canal" were later included on the Old Town School of Folk Music Songbook collection released by Bloodshot Records. The couple raised their children in Uptown, where folk musicians, among them Doc Watson, sometimes stayed in the family apartment.
Teaching folk music, his family said, inspired Johnson to return to university. He earned an M.A. at Loyola and a Ph.D. in English literature and American civilization at Northwestern University, then taught in the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State and taught English at Indiana University Northwest in Gary. He later worked as a textbook editor for McDougal Littell, part of Houghton Mifflin.
In the early 1980s Johnson helped found the Chicago Sacred Harp Singers, and he became one of the people most responsible for spreading shape note singing, the American a cappella hymn tradition, across the city. He and Marcia served as co-chairs of the Midwest Sacred Harp Convention. Johnson also composed in the style: his tune "New Agatite" appears in the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp, and his 1990 fuguing tune "Boulder," set to words by Isaac Watts, became a favorite that he led at conventions for decades.
When he stopped teaching, Johnson did not leave the Old Town School. He came back as a student of Irish fiddle so he could learn alongside his two grandchildren, and he wrote fiddle tunes of his own. In his eighties he made one last trip to Ireland with fiddle friends to play sessions in pubs. In a 2017 StoryCorps interview he described music as "magic," saying that every minute spent picking, singing and jamming would add a minute to your life.
Johnson died on October 10, 2026, at Rainbow Hospice at Resurrection Hospital in Chicago. In his final days musicians came to visit, nearly two dozen Sacred Harp singers gave a concert at his bedside, and his longtime colleague Michael Miles played banjo for him. No cause of death has been made public. He is survived by his wife, Marcia, his daughter, Kathryn "Kate" Johnson Thomas, and his grandchildren, Edward and Grace. His son, Aaron, his parents and his brother Don died before him. His family chose aquamation and a private burial, and a memorial service is planned for early 2027.
Biography adapted from Chicago Sun-Times obituary by Mark Guarino (2026-10-16); family death notice via Inclusive Funeral Care / Legacy.com (2026-10-12); Old Town School of Folk Music history; WFMT (2018); StoryCorps (2017).
In their own words
“There's something indescribable about it ... Picking and singing and just jamming, every minute spent doing that will add a minute to your life.”
On music as magic, StoryCorps interview, quoted by the Chicago Sun-Times (2026)
“One thing about skiing is that you can get on the chair lift, practice yodeling, and no one can get at you.”
Joking to the Chicago Tribune in 1998 about learning to yodel from his brother
“A couple of minutes later, we played the riff. Transmitting this supposedly arcane thing for these ordinary people who had never done that before, it was really dramatic.”
Recalling the Old Town School's opening night in 1957, as told to Mark Guarino
“Win Stracke turned and said to me, 'I'm going to start a school around this guy.'”
Remembering Frank Hamilton's lessons in Dawn Greening's house, WFMT (2018)
“Frank had just come in from Los Angeles where he had been exposed to Bess Hawes, who was John Lomax's daughter, and different approaches of teaching people to play and get together for social music.”
On the roots of the Old Town School method, WFMT (2018)
“He was a man made of music. My dad was curious his whole life. He was never disengaged.”
Tribute from his daughter, Kate Thomas, Chicago Sun-Times (2026)
“He was very unassuming, quick with a smile, with lots of appreciation for everything and everybody around him.”
Tribute from Old Town School banjo teacher Michael Miles, Chicago Sun-Times (2026)
Photos
2Ted Johnson, longtime teacher and student at the Old Town School of Folk Music
by People Forever
The Old Town School of Folk Music at 4544 N. Lincoln Ave. in Lincoln Square, Chicago
by People Forever
that got me, he never stopped learning