Johnnie Frierson

A relatively minor participant on the middle-’60s Memphis spirit picture, Johnnie Frierson got his start at a age, joining gospel act the Sunset Travelers while still an adolescent. The entire year was 1964 and he produced his 1st appearance on record playing acoustic guitar around the Travelers’ Peacock label one “On Jesus’ Plan.” Delivered and elevated in Memphis to a committed Christian family members, Frierson would spend the majority of his intermittent profession alternating between gospel music and secular spirit and R&B. Around once he was starting his gospel profession, he and his young sister, Mary Frierson Combination, shaped the R&B quartet the Drapels with the purpose of cutting an archive for Stax. The youthful group eventually gained its way in to the studio room by persistently going out at Stax’s workplace after college and looking to forge cable connections. As the Drapels’ four Stax edges never quite became popular, Mary and her performing partner, Marianne Brittenum, became significantly busy singing back-up for Otis Redding and several various other prominent Stax performers. When Mary was ultimately agreed upon as Wendy Rene, Johnnie proved helpful even more behind the moments, co-writing her biggest Stax strike, “After Laughter (Shows up Tears),” and carrying out some back-up gigs of his very own. His efforts out of this period weren’t just limited by the Stax roster, as he became energetic at Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studio room, co-writing Tony Ashley’s funk tune “I’ll Move Crazy” and fronting the Hi Tempo Section (beneath the name Adam Fry), who released an individual, “Tumbling Down,” for Hi Information in 1968. This period of the later ’60s will be Frierson’s most prolific and, carrying out a stint using the U.S. Military in Vietnam, he spent a lot of the pursuing two decades from the music business. He and several friends did discharge one 1975 gospel solitary, “IS IT POSSIBLE TO Lose by Pursuing God,” using the music group name Entire Truth, but also for the most component, Frierson stayed from the limelight, raising a family group, working several careers, and playing just occasionally at regional clubs and celebrations. In the first ’90s he hosted a gospel display on regional radio train station WEVL Memphis, and sometime in the first area of the 10 years he became referred to as Khafele Ajanaku. It had been under this name that he started releasing music once again. Documenting himself with only a basic tape recorder, he started to self-release cassettes, offering them at regional festivals and part shops around Memphis. The extra but upbeat and soulful tunes were religious naturally, with Frierson associated himself go on guitar. His child Keesha identifies this period as you of her father’s most challenging occasions, as he continuing to have problems with what was probably post-traumatic tension disorder due to his amount of time in Vietnam. About five years after Frierson’s loss of life in Apr 2010, his homemade cassettes had been found out in a Memphis thrift shop by regional music aficionado Jameson Sweiger, who brought these to the interest of reissue label Light in the Attic. In 2016, they provided Frierson’s unique tracks a luxurious reissue beneath the name ARE YOU Great to Yourself, posthumously plucking him out of obscurity.