R.I.P. John Bernadot

My dear friend John Bernadot passed on October 30, 2020.

John was a musical legend, opening with his band for major acts across the country, and blessing the Tri-State Area with his joyful musical artistry. In his later years, after his head injury, brain hemorrhage, and surgery, his emphasis changed to largely “singing for Jesus.” He reported that more than twenty times, he would be singing and patients who had not been able to speak or who had been in comas would mouth words, tap along, sing, or even begin to talk again.

I first met John around 1986, when as he loved to tell, I had tuned the piano at the Viroqua (WI) Heritage Inn, where he was setting up to broadcast a radio show. We were walking down the sidewalk together. He looked at my crutches, which I use due to the polio I contracted in 1952 at the age of ten months, and remarked, “You’re pretty fast on those things.”

I replied, “You wanna race?”

Before he knew what to say, I had whipped down the walk, turned up toward the big porch on the inn, and was sitting there laughing at him.

Over the following decades, John would let me join him on his radio shows around southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin. We performed in parades and entertained at the La Crosse Community Thanksgiving Dinner and for farmers, seniors, churchgoers, and whoever else wanted a musical good time. He engineered much of my album “Censored by a Cigarette” on the second floor of his old farmhouse in Homer Valley, south of Winona, MN. He asked me to write his memoirs, which I an doing with the able assistance of Fran Bockenhauer and other friends. The Winona Friendship Center is producing a video documentary on his life. Some of his and my music will be on my YouTube channel “Live Armadillo.”

Through the Amazing Grace of Jesus, Johnny is now reunited with his wife Joan and daughter Tara, and is rockin’ the halls of heaven. I say regarding his unique life what he would say when one of our performances of “Rockin’ Pneumonia,” ”New York, New York,” “Proud Mary” or another oldie would go particularly well…

“That was a production!”