Biography
Pastor Wylie Champion existed as an anomaly, a wandering figure who preached without holding any fixed congregation and pursued gospel music from the fringes. Decades of travel carried him along California’s coast, where he performed on electric guitar, delivered songs in a mature and mellow baritone, and delivered sermons well past his seventieth birthday.
Even in recent times, substantial anonymity proved possible. Concrete information about him remains scarce. Reticent by nature and inclined to let his music speak, he revealed only that he entered the world as Wylie Champion in Shreveport, Louisiana, as one of fourteen siblings and as the brother of soul singer Bettye Swann. He also raised five children and worked capably as a carpenter.
Scattered personal recollections he shared pointed to a difficult past. His father gambled, and the Ku Klux Klan targeted his mother. During segregation he received a ninety-day jail sentence for entering a “whites only” restroom. Earlier in life he belonged to a gang, carried a street alias, and bore a prominent Maltese Cross tattoo on his left hand.
For the final forty years of his life he performed and preached wherever a church extended an invitation. In 2013 he launched a YouTube channel that ultimately contained just three videos. Most appearances occurred in footage posted by Bishop Dr. W.C. McClinton from Oakland’s 37th Street Baptist Church, whose channel had long featured visiting musicians and preachers.
Luaka Bop first encountered Champion through that same channel while compiling the anthology The Time for Peace Is Now: Gospel Music About Us. Impressed by the clips, the label arranged to document his work, enlisting McClinton to make contact. In 2018 the church itself served as the recording site, an apt choice given that Luaka Bop representatives had initially heard him there. Across two evenings Champion instructed a newly assembled group of musicians in several pieces drawn from the nearly two thousand fragments and sermons he routinely performed, many of them created spontaneously in the longstanding Black gospel manner.
Sessions captured him live onto analog two-track reel-to-reel tape to evoke the sound of earlier gospel recordings and his own customary presentations. Champion supplied producers with little additional personal history beyond the scant details already known. Upon reviewing the tapes, Luaka Bop recognized their singular, almost otherworldly character yet hesitated over how to introduce them publicly, leaving the recordings untouched for a couple of years while they considered options. Champion himself viewed his music as difficult to market, yet he remained untroubled; his goal had always been to convey the message through voice and electric guitar regardless of format.
He did not survive to witness the release of his sole album. Champion passed away on December 28, 2021, at age seventy-five, only months after his mother. Luaka Bop issued I Just Want to Be a Good Man in April 2022.
Even in recent times, substantial anonymity proved possible. Concrete information about him remains scarce. Reticent by nature and inclined to let his music speak, he revealed only that he entered the world as Wylie Champion in Shreveport, Louisiana, as one of fourteen siblings and as the brother of soul singer Bettye Swann. He also raised five children and worked capably as a carpenter.
Scattered personal recollections he shared pointed to a difficult past. His father gambled, and the Ku Klux Klan targeted his mother. During segregation he received a ninety-day jail sentence for entering a “whites only” restroom. Earlier in life he belonged to a gang, carried a street alias, and bore a prominent Maltese Cross tattoo on his left hand.
For the final forty years of his life he performed and preached wherever a church extended an invitation. In 2013 he launched a YouTube channel that ultimately contained just three videos. Most appearances occurred in footage posted by Bishop Dr. W.C. McClinton from Oakland’s 37th Street Baptist Church, whose channel had long featured visiting musicians and preachers.
Luaka Bop first encountered Champion through that same channel while compiling the anthology The Time for Peace Is Now: Gospel Music About Us. Impressed by the clips, the label arranged to document his work, enlisting McClinton to make contact. In 2018 the church itself served as the recording site, an apt choice given that Luaka Bop representatives had initially heard him there. Across two evenings Champion instructed a newly assembled group of musicians in several pieces drawn from the nearly two thousand fragments and sermons he routinely performed, many of them created spontaneously in the longstanding Black gospel manner.
Sessions captured him live onto analog two-track reel-to-reel tape to evoke the sound of earlier gospel recordings and his own customary presentations. Champion supplied producers with little additional personal history beyond the scant details already known. Upon reviewing the tapes, Luaka Bop recognized their singular, almost otherworldly character yet hesitated over how to introduce them publicly, leaving the recordings untouched for a couple of years while they considered options. Champion himself viewed his music as difficult to market, yet he remained untroubled; his goal had always been to convey the message through voice and electric guitar regardless of format.
He did not survive to witness the release of his sole album. Champion passed away on December 28, 2021, at age seventy-five, only months after his mother. Luaka Bop issued I Just Want to Be a Good Man in April 2022.
Albums
Singles
