Johnnie B. Bad Is Finally Out of the Shadows : Pop music: Pianist Johnnie Johnson helped shape rock history backing Chuck Berry. Now, he’s in the spotlight and working with the likes of Keith Richards and Eric Clapton.

Lots of musicians would consider it a career highlight to play with a musical legend, but pianist Johnnie Johnson has done it at opposite ends of a 40-plus-year career.

In 1952, he hired a local singer-guitarist in St. Louis to fill out his trio for a New Year’s Eve show: Chuck Berry. In late 1990, he recorded his first major-label album, “Johnnie B. Bad,” for Elektra’s American Explorer series, and a couple of rock guitarists pitched in: Keith Richards and Eric Clapton.

“It feels great to be in this position,” said Johnson, 67, who headlines the Belly Up on Monday. “Hopefully, people will always call me a living legend when I’m introduced at different places. . . . It raises your eyebrows, believe me.”

Johnson doesn’t make that claim lightly. When Berry recorded his classic ‘50s singles--”Maybellene,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Johnny B. Goode” et al.--there was Johnson, helping shape the arrangements and inserting the rollicking piano embellishments into riffs that would become enduring elements in the rock ‘n’ roll vocabulary.

“Well yes, that’s me,” Johnson said during a recent phone interview from a tour stop in Harrisburg, Pa. “They supposedly shot a capsule out in space some years ago (containing some Chuck Berry records). . . . If it would be discovered in years to come, they might not know what they’re listening to, but I’ll be there.”

Johnson, who also played jazz and big band over the years, accompanied Berry on stage for 28 years, and they still occasionally get together--Johnson will be playing with him at a Chicago show next month.

“I could tell it right after he had ‘Maybellene’ that he was going to be a big wheel in music,” Johnson said of Berry. “He was playing something different, and the public is always looking for something different, and it had a heck of a beat. Plus the lyrics were catchy. I didn’t know he would go as big as he did go, but I knew he would be big.”

The relationship has survived some disparaging comments by Berry in his autobiography about Johnson’s drinking. But the pianist doesn’t complain about the criticism.

“It didn’t hurt, because it was true,” he said. “I used to be a heavy drinker, and it did interfere with my playing. . . . In fact, reading things like that and doing stupid things while I was in this stupor, I mean it brought me out of it. I haven’t touched a drink now in the last three years. I’m strictly a pineapple juice man.”

Johnson, who also worked in a steel foundry, in construction and in auto plants, began his move toward center stage when he met Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards during the filming of the 1987 Berry musical tribute film, “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

“Keith’s a buddy, he’s a doll,” Johnson said. “Really, he’s the one responsible for me being out here now like I am, ‘cause he kept saying: ‘You can do it, why don’t you try? Stop playing in somebody else’s shadow, get out there on your own.’

“He’s the one that really triggered me off into this. Like we got together with this ‘Tanqueray’ (a song on Johnson’s album that Richards produced). He said, ‘Now we got the music, now you’re gonna sing.’ I told him, ‘You’re jokin’, because I can’t even talk, much less sing.’ He said, ‘Go ahead on and try it; you never know.’ And I got up enough nerve to try it.

“Now I (don’t have) mike fright anymore. That was my biggest trouble. I could play to a million people on piano, but I couldn’t say hello to three of them out there in an audience on the mike. But I’m kind of getting over that now.”

While Johnson is enjoying the spotlight, he has no regrets about his auxiliary role in rock history.

“I was just glad to be out there and was very comfortable playing with Chuck,” he said. “Not being out front was no problem. ‘Cause the people will notice you whether you’re out front or not. I think I got recognition. I didn’t feel like I’d been neglected. I was just tryin’ to make a style with Chuck, which we did.”