(2CD)
BIOGRAPHY
His father was the phenomenally talented and revered Robert Wilkins who
had recorded blues during the 20’s and 30’s. It was his ‘That’s No Way To
Get Along’ that the Rolling Stones would cover for their ‘Beggars Banquet’
album. By then Robert had forsaken his life as a bluesman for over thirty
years and had re-recorded this number in the 60’s as a gospel song
entitled ‘Prodigal Son’. He had developed a gospel style that was based on
his earlier country blues style - a style that developed into the rock 'n'
roll sound that Memphis, and then the world, would later claim as it's
own.
When the young John Wilkins was learning to play guitar, he picked up his
father's gospel and country blues styles. He also absorbed the soulful
sounds that were being pioneered by local musicians and recorded by
legendary Memphis labels like Sun and Stax. As he approached adulthood in
the 1960s, John could be found playing in church, at parties, and at
clubs. Like his father before him, John walked a similar musical line
between the sacred and secular. He spent most of his time hustling gigs
with bands in Memphis clubs like Dinos, The Flamingo Lounge and the Club
Handy often finding himself backing visiting artists including the great
James Carr.
He also started hanging around the various Stax recording studios in and
around Memphis picking up work as a studio musician. The wealth of talent
in Memphis at that time was so great and overwhelming that often he would
be unaware who the artists were that he was backing! During all this
period he still worked in gospel quartets and began a twenty year gig with
the M&N Gospel Singers. In 1963 he met and befriended O.V. Wright who
was looking for someone to play guitar, and so in 1965 John played guitar
on O.V. Wright's first secular recording ‘You Gonna Make Me Cry’. Then in
the early 70's, John recorded an album 'Where's The Road That Leads Home'
with the M&N Gospel Singers.
In the early 1980's, John's life came full circle when he followed his
father's footsteps in a call to the ministry. He was ordained in 1983 and
in 1985 became pastor of Hunter's Chapel Church in Tate County, just
outside Como, Mississippi. Ever since then John has led a congregation
that includes generations of Tate County locals, as well as the late fife
players Otha Turner and Napoleon Strickland and their families, and
numerous other regional parishioners and North Mississippi musicians. In
earlier times, legendary Hill Country bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell
and his wife Annie Mae were members of Hunter's Chapel congregation.
It was they who, in the mid 1960s first introduced the Hunter's Chapel
Singers to the world on the outstanding album 'Amazing Grace: Mississippi
Delta Spirituals' on Testament Records. Napoleon Strickland is buried at
Hunter's Chapel Church and Fred McDowell is buried a few miles away at
Hammond Hill Baptist Church, Como.
As part of his pastoral duties John is able to combine his love of
motorbikes and the Lord by becoming the official National Pastor to the
King Riders Motorcycle Club where he is known as the ‘Biker’s Preacher’.
Now at 66 John has recorded his debut full-length album "You Can't Hurry
God", a CD of religious songs in which he showcases an individual sound
that can have only been made by a child of the North Mississippi Hill
Country. The recording is a culmination of a lifetime spent learning from,
and ministering to some of the luminaries of North Mississippi and
Memphis.