Johnny Bush

Born John Bush Shinn III in Houston, the future singer, songwriter, and drummer Johnny Bush launched his country music path in 1952 by performing as a vocalist and guitarist at San Antonio’s Texas Star Inn. He later moved to drums and spent the early 1960s as a member of Willie Nelson’s band, the Record Men. One year afterward he signed on with Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys. Throughout his three-year tenure he repeatedly sought a recording contract, yet every label rejected him for sounding too similar to Price. Nelson covered the cost of Bush’s debut album, Sound of a Heartache. Following encouraging local airplay, Bush first appeared on the charts in 1967 with the modest success “You Oughta Hear Me Cry.” The subsequent year yielded three charting singles, one of which, “Undo the Right,” reached the Top Ten.

Bush scored a Top 20 single in 1972 with “I’ll Be There,” prompting an RCA contract that soon produced the Top Ten entry “Whiskey River,” the composition that eventually became Nelson’s signature song. At the threshold of major stardom Bush began to lose vocal range. Physicians identified the cause only in 1978, confirming a rare neurological condition known as spastic dysphonia. Recording continued, yet commercial momentum faded. In 1985, training with voice builder Gary Catona restored roughly seventy percent of Bush’s earlier power. The next year he joined Darrell McCall for the well-received honky-tonk collection Hot Texas Country. He then formed a sizable country ensemble and resumed regular appearances throughout San Antonio.

Bush and the band issued Time Changes Everything in 1994 and embarked on an extensive tour; the 1998 follow-up, Talk to My Heart, was hailed as one of his strongest efforts in years. He maintained a steady output of recordings through the new millennium, occasionally issuing two albums within a single calendar year. Among those releases were Lost Highway Saloon and Sings Bob Wills, both from 2000; Green Snakes in 2001; Honkytonic in 2004; Texas State of Mind and Devil’s Disciple, both appearing in 2006; and the 2007 projects Texas on a Saturday Night, shared with Justin Trevino, and Kashmere Gardens Mud: A Tribute to Houston’s Country Soul.