 It is contended that he and Billy Eckstine, Hines' long-term collaborator, led Hines to hire "modernists" in the birth of bebop, which came largely out of the Hines band.Johnson was also an early figure in the bebop era, doing sessions with Coleman Hawkins in 1944.In the 1950s he led his own group and did session work for Atlantic Records - he is the featured tenor saxophone soloist on Ruth Brown's hit "Teardrops from My Eyes".