Johnson was born on January 28, 1983, in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Lonnie Johnson and Elise Ramsey. He has one brother. When he was 17 years old, his father died of cancer. In December 2011, Carldell said that, "My whole life, I’ve been trying to grind it out and work hard to get where I need to be. My father died from cancer, and I grew up in a tough neighborhood in (eastern) New Orleans, where guys would get bored and find time to get into other things, like stealing cars and walking around looking for fights. But Coach Tillman would always pick me up and have us going to practice, whether it was basketball season or not." He attended John F. Kennedy High School in New Orleans and transferred to Marion Abramson High School for his senior year. At Abramson he played basketball under head coach Robert Tillman. Tillman was also Johnson\'s coach in AAU basketball. After high school, he was not recruited by any division one schools to play basketball, so he attended Salt Lake Community College, where he was the team\'s starting point guard. He averaged eight points and eight assists during his one season there. Following the season, Tillman approached then-University of Alabama-Birmingham head basketball coach Mike Anderson and told him to, "just watch [Johnson] a little bit; get all your players together and play a pickup game and let him guard your point guard." Eventually, as Tillman says in an interview with The Times-Picayune, "They went out there and played, and after it was all over, Mike said he was going to give him a try, but he would have to sit out his first year."\n', '

During Hurricane Katrina in 2006, his mother Elise, who lived in New Orleans at the time, had her house destroyed, but managed to evacuate to Houston, Texas, before joining Carldell in Birmingham, Alabama. Presently, she resides in Houston.\n', '

In his first season playing for the UAB Blazers, Johnson started in 22 of 32 games and led the nation in assist–to–turnover ratio, averaging 3.83 assists for every turnover he committed. He finished the season averaging 4.8 points, 1.8 rebounds, and a team-leading 4.3 assist per game. Johnson also finished the season with a total of 137 assists and 71 steals. On March 12, 2004, he achieved his first career double-double, recording 14 points and 11 assists against the DePaul Blue Demons. In his junior season, he played in all 33 of UAB\'s games, starting 32 of them. For the second straight season, he led the conference in assists-to-turnover ratio. Johnson recorded a season-high of nine assists on two occasions, first against Louisville and then against DePaul. In the DePaul game, he played in a career-high 41 minutes. At season\'s end, he was named as a nominee for the Bob Cousy Award, given to the nation\'s top point guard. In his senior season at UAB, he finished with averages of 7.3 points, 3.0 rebounds, 6.3 assists, and 2.6 steals per game.\n', '

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