Jimmy Johnson calls what he plays energy-blues, saying that is what he plays because that is what he feels, and even though times change, he still plays his music from the heart. Johnson is bringing his energy blues to Carbondale this weekend for a double set at A.C. Reed’s.

Nothing really remains the same, he said. A Model-T is still a car, but the only difference is that there have been changes since then. Blues music has changed the same way, so my music changes through time, and it also changes with the way I am feeling when I play, but it is still the blues.

Johnson grew up on music, playing the piano and singing in the church choir in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In 1959, he began his love affair with the blues and starting playing guitar, spending the next 20 years playing in and around Chicago.

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If you are a carpenter and a person wants a garage, you build them a garage and not a house, he said. When I started playing my music, people wanted to hear good blues music, and so that is what I played.

And played he did, going so far as to earn a Grammy nomination in 1978, and also winning a W.C. Handy Award for the Best Contemporary Foreign Blues LP of the Year through his own unique combination of blues-rhythm styles, combined with his own brand of humor.

I don’t know why people started including humor, he said. There were a couple of interviews where I probably told a few jokes, and the next thing you know, people were saying that about me and how it effects my music.

Oddly enough, he is kind of critical of his own work, preferring to listen to jazz, gospel, and other blues musicians rather to his own recordings.

I don’t really listen to my own music, he said. As far as I am concerned, there are a lot of other people out there better than me. I consider myself old, and old fashioned, but I play for the people and hope they like it.

Johnson said he doesn’t limit himself to what he listens to, saying that every type of music is different, and to pick a favorite is limiting as well as somewhat selfish.

The same holds true to the way he plays his own music and styles of writing, working on light-hearted music for some shows, as well as songs with serious themes, such as drug abuse by children, for others.

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If there is one thing I would like everyone to pay attention to it is the problems with drugs coming into our country, he said. I blame the system and how it effects the children, and some of my songs are going to reflect that.

In what has turned out to be a very distinguished blues career, Johnson said it has all been worth it, even through the ups and downs.

If I had to go back, I would do it all over again and make the same choices. You have to take the ups and downs because that is what life throws at you.

Jimmy Johnson plays at 10 p.m., Saturday, at A.C. Reeds, 213 E. Maine.

Admission is $5, $4 with student I.D.