Willie Headen

Though he never scored a major national hit, Willie Headen produced a string of solid R&B sides during the mid- to late 1950s in a small-combo, piano-driven format that was already losing ground as rock & roll gained traction. His musical path started in gospel, where he assembled a vocal ensemble for church performances in Austin, TX, before becoming a member of the Kansas City Gospel Singers, though he is absent from their early-1950s releases. After relocating to Los Angeles in the early 1950s, he supported himself shining shoes in Watts until customer Dootsie Williams took notice of the way Headen sang on the job. Williams placed him on his Dootone roster—despite concurrent interest from Bumps Blackwell at Specialty—and Headen recorded his first 45 for the label in 1954. Roughly a dozen more singles appeared through the remainder of the decade on Dootone and its sister imprints Authentic and Dooto, with several oddly credited to Willie Hayden and one issued as Clifford Chambers. An LP also surfaced on Dootone in 1960, yet Headen soon stepped away from the industry, returning only for a pair of soul outings on Kent in the late 1960s.