(Blues Jazz, Blues Soul) Johnny Williams - Johnny Williams Vol. 2 - 2015, MP3, 320 kbps

One might think the boy from Baytown, Texas would be C&W, but Johnny Williams loves all kinds of music: traditional country, jazz, blues, and you can hear them all in songs he writes. Williams says all genres have its own soul and if it's soulful, he feels it.
"There's no way I can explain it," he says. "I was not from a musical family. We didn't sing in the church choir. Very few in my hometown even had a guitar, much less a band." Yet, Johnny Williams grew up to be the king of the Houston pre-disco dance clubs before DJs killed live club music and he topped the local and regional charts with a recording of "Long Black Veil.”
His first influences were Glenn Miller and Hank Williams Sr., but Williams grew up in the era when rock and roll was invented; black artists like Lloyd Price, The Spiders, Johnny Ace were getting airplay. He was there when the world heard of Elvis and the Beatles. "While most of the kids grew up listening to The Beach Boys, I was listening to Jimmy Smith, B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, and Ray Charles, but I can get goose bumps listening to George Jones, Tony Bennett, John Coltrane or the Houston Symphony."
Johnny’s first major influence was blues singer Joe Tex. When Tex was a disc jockey at KREL he was known as Jivin’ Joe. When Jivin’ Joe Tex would visit his mother in Baytown “I heard a lot of his songs and ideas as I was growing up,” Williams remembers, “he would come by our house and entertain us by singing, playing the piano and telling jokes. He entertained all of Baytown.” Williams and Tex remained friends until Tex died at age 49. In tribute, Williams has recorded two of Tex’s songs with plans to do more.