John Edwards – A Careful Man

A Christmas Day baby, John was born in St. Louis as 1944 was drawing to its close. Like many of his peers he grew up with gospel music,  thanks to a devout mother, and from a very young age he was exposed to the music of such stellar gospel acts as the Soul Stirrers, the Pilgrim Travelers and the Dixie Hummingbirds. it was something of a formality that he would sing in church as a teenager and of course, brief membership of a group called the Starlight Jubilee Singers would follow as the 50s drew to their close.

Like most young black Americans John fell under the spell of the newly-emergent soul music as it arrived in the early 60s, but rather than pursue a career as a professional singer himself he firstly joined the US Army, where he combined his patriotic chores with the occasional singing gig on base, wherever he happened to be stationed in the world. He spent some time stationed in Georgia where he got to know upcoming artists of the calibre of Oscar Toney Jr. and James & Bobby Purify. However it wasn’t really until he was discharged from the army and moved to Chicago in 1968, to take a day job in the steel industry and try to hustle a few singing gigs on the side, that singing for a living started to become a reality for our man.

A chain of events rapidly happened that year that would escalate John’s career, starting with him meeting Donny Hathaway who in turn introduced him to Curtis Mayfield – who again in turn directed John to a newly incorporated label that was looking for fresh talent. Thus it was that John ended up on Bob Weaver’s Weis (as in ‘We Is’) imprint for a brief time at the end of the 60s, with a couple of 45s that were distributed by Stax of all companies.  Both the funky ‘If I Don’t Lose My Head’ and the stupendous soul ballad ‘There’ll Never Be Another Woman’ were co-produced by Weaver and Joshie Jo Armstead (who also worked on a subsequent single of John’s for another Chicago indie, Twin Stacks Records) but despite their superior quality and Stax’ national distribution neither record made anything more than local noise. (Both the Weis singles have been reissued in the past on Kent albums and CDs…)

A couple of years would pass before John’s name appeared on another record label. Still in Chicago, and under the supervision of local movers and shakers Archie Russell and Floyd Smith, he cut a terrific version of Phillip Mitchell’s ‘It’s Those Little Things That Count’ and one of many great renditions of Smith’s song ‘The Look On Your Face’ – but again, these quality tunes reached only a limited number of ears at the time.  John would however continue his working relationship with Smith the following year, after a friend got him a deal with the notorious Michael Thevis’ General Recording Corporation out of Atlanta. It was on GRC’s Aware subsidiary that John made the recordings that forged his reputation as a Premier League soul man, starting with his version of Bill Brandon’s ‘Stop This Merry-Go-Round’ which became the first of six solo R&B hits he would enjoy over the next three years, almost all of them cracking the Top 60 and one – his label mate Jimmy Lewis’ fabulous song ‘Careful Man’ – reaching the Top 10.

The success of these singles and sales of an attendant debut album led to John starting a second long player, primarily under the supervision of Memphis drumming legend Al Jackson Jr., but before too much progress had been made Al was murdered in a home invasion. That, coupled with the collapse of GRC after Thevis was jailed for a number of things that this is not the place to discuss, brought John’s time as an  Aware artist to a fairly abrupt end. Fortunately his recordings for the label survived the collapse, and several decades later Kent was able to assemble “Careful Man” (CDKEND 127) a wonderful John Edwards CD containing both the issued recordings and a number of sublime unissued performances of songs by the likes of Sam Dees, Phillip Mitchell and Ashford & Simpson that were every bit the equal of those that had been issued in the first half of the 1970s.

John had to wait nearly two years for his next solo opportunity. When it came he found himself on Atlantic subsidiary Cotillion, where he recorded a great sophomore album with another Stax legend, David Porter that yielded his final two solo chart 45s. His then-business manager Buddy Allen recommended John to Cotillion head Henry Allen (no relation that I am aware of), but it would not be too long before John’s solo career disappeared and he found himself the co-lead singer of one of parent label Atlantic’s biggest groups of the era.

Following the permanent departure of Philippe Wynne for George Clinton’s Funkadelic, John became a full-time member of the Spinners in 1977 – a position he would hold until the early ‘noughties. He had deputised for an ailing Wynne on tour already, so when the mercurial singer left for good John was already fully versed in all things Spinners, and given that they shared the same management it was probably one of the easier business deals that took place that year.  John led or co-led on a total of 15 R&B and pop chart hits for the group over the next 7 or 8 years, the most significant of which have to be their two globally successful medleys based around 60s hits ‘Working My Way Back To You’ and the Grammy nominated ‘Cupid’ in late 1979/early 1980.As well as peaking well inside the Top 5 of the US Soul and Pop charts, the former topped the pop charts here in the UK while ‘Cupid’ also peaked inside our Top 5. These were John’s biggest successes as a Spinner, and make him arguably the only true cult hero of soul to have ever been on ‘Top Of The Pops’…

John sang with the Spinners throughout the 80s and 90s, but a mild stroke in 2000 (when he was temporarily replaced by G C Cameron, a returning Spinner from their Motown days) and eventually a more serious one in 2002 as a bi-product of a quadruple heart by-pass operation led to an enforced retirement, not only from the group but also from music in general. When the Spinners were deservedly inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2023 John made an upbeat but emotional acceptance speech, via video, wherein he said he was ‘totally overjoyed, it’s like getting married again’.  It’s always nice when someone who deserves their flowers doesn’t have to wait to receive them posthumously…

Sadly John only got to keep those flowers for another 18 months or so. At the beginning of May he was admitted to hospital due to a diabetes-related problem.  He never came home and we lost him, at the age of 80, on May 9^th.  He will be missed and mourned not only by his immediate family, but also by his expansive soul family that have loved and supported his music for more than half a century.

JOHN EDWARDS: 25.12.1944 – 9.5.2025