Johnny Adams

Renowned in his Crescent City base as "the Tan Canary" thanks to his extraordinary soulfully soaring pipes, veteran R&B vocalist Johnny Adams explored an unusually broad range of material on Rounder during his later career. Those projects included tastefully crafted tribute albums to songwriting legends Doc Pomus and Percy Mayfield before he ventured into softer, jazz-inflected terrain. Adams had never favored the parade-beat rhythms long associated with the New Orleans R&B style, instead favoring refined soul ballads wrapped in string arrangements.

He performed gospel professionally prior to entering the secular market in 1959. Songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie, who had sanitized the lyrics of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" for mass appeal, persuaded her neighbor Adams to record her ballad "I Won't Cry." Teenaged Mac Rebennack produced the single, issued on Joe Ruffino's Ric imprint, launching Adams's trajectory. He cut several strong Ric sides, among them the Rebennack-written "A Losing Battle," which became his first national R&B hit in 1962, and "Life Is a Struggle."

Following an extended lull, Adams returned in 1968 with a fervent R&B treatment of Jimmy Heap's country standard "Release Me" on Shelby Singleton's SSS label that reached national charts. Even stronger was his 1969 country-soul masterpiece "Reconsider Me," his sole R&B Top Ten entry, in which he glides into a soaring falsetto to convey the song's emotional weight. Although further SSS releases such as "I Can't Be All Bad" also sold well, Adams never regained comparable commercial success, a period that included an unsatisfying stint at Atlantic. He enjoyed renewed recording opportunities at Rounder, where his 1984 album From the Heart demonstrated that the Tan Canary retained his vocal prowess. In collaboration with producer Scott Billington he completed nine albums for the label before succumbing to cancer on September 14, 1998.