"Although the African American community of New Albany, Mississippi has been small in number, it has produced many citizens of distinction. In the fields of blues, rhythm & blues, and gospel music, the names of Sam Mosley, Bob Johnson, Billy Ball, the Rev. Leon Pinson, and Elder Roma Wilson are known around the world. Mosley and Johnson, who launched a prolific creative partnership in 1967, performed together for 31 years and wrote songs for many of the top artists in blues.
Sam Mosley & Bob Johnson drafted their own hometown success story by utilizing their skills as performers, producers, and songwriters throughout their long tenure together in New Albany. As Mosley & Johnson, the team recorded several albums of blues and southern soul in the 1980s and '90s for the Muscle Shoals Sound and Malaco labels, but found a more lucrative niche as songwriters for Malaco artists Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Bland, Little Milton, and others. They recorded their first album, Mississippi Mud, on their own Sabo label in 1971, as Sam and Bob & the Soulmen. They also recorded in the 1970s for Polydor under the name Mojoba.
Sam Mosley was born in the Beaver Dam community on March 30, 1946, while Robert A. “Bob” Johnson was born in New Albany on March 4, 1946. Mosley's father, sharecropper Joe Mosley, played mandolin in a string band with Sam's uncles, Bud and Theodore (“Shoat”). In 1959 Joe's sons, Jamie, Sam, and Ralph, began performing as Jamie & the Dynamics. Sam left Mississippi for several years and served in Vietnam, but when he returned home in 1967 he hooked up with Johnson, an old schoolmate who was leading a band called Bobby Johnson & the Messengers. Although neither had formal musical training, they later learned the ins and outs of music arranging and producing when they worked with the vaunted Muscle Shoals studio band in Alabama. After Johnson died of a heart attack onstage at a Verona, Mississippi, performance on August 22, 1998, Mosley and Bob's brothers Willie and Miles continued to perform as the Mosley Johnson Band." Ms Blues Trail
