We have a new blog regular, Dr. Hep Cat, to thank for this week's Gospel post. We were FB chatting about other music when he asked me the question "are you hip to Johnny Jones?". I was forced to respond "apparently not!" (a response delivered with a bit of a wince, I admit). DHC came back "he was one of the lead vocals for The Swanee Quintet." ...Well okay, I've heard of them and have some tracks on compilations... not enough that I know a thing about the members tho. Well DHC responded by sending me a pair of jaw dropping lp rips and I was hooked! That pair of records represented 2/3 of his solo output and over the next couple days I managed to come up with the other lp (contained in the compilation pictured here) and even a couple of secular tracks (there were 4 recorded all told, DHC had a third, but one is still missing)! What you will get in this package is everything we have assembled to date which has to be very close to being complete.
Johnny was not a hard gospel 'shouter', but instead a smooth gospel crooner more in the mold of Sam Cooke. In fact, when Sam left the Soul Stirrers to pursue his secular career, it was Jones who was his first replacement. After 6 months or so, Johnny decided that the Stirrer's were not for him and he left, clearing the way for Johnnie Taylor.
An offshoot of this project you will hear today is that DHC and I both realized that there wasn't much in the way of a satisfying collection of The Swanee Quintet out there either and we began working on remedying THAT situation too! It will be a week or two before we reveal the results of our quest on that front, but let me offer that we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams!
