Fans know Jellybean Johnson’s music as a soundtrack of an era that lives on, but at his funeral on Saturday, his family remembered the man.
Johnson, an accomplished producer, songwriter, guitarist and drummer, was the beat behind hits like “Jungle Love,” “Jerk Out” and “The Bird.” He played with Flyte Tyme starting in the early 1970s. That band would go on to form an association with Prince in 1981 to become the funk and R&B group known as The Time.
He became a cornerstone of the local music scene as a core architect of the Minneapolis Sound, a subgenre of funk that weaves elements of new wave, R&B and synth-pop…