John Gary Williams, whose pleading lead vocals were key to the success of the Mad Lads, a doo-wop-influenced Stax group that recorded several influential…
John Gary Williams, whose pleading lead vocals were key to the success of the Mad Lads, a doo-wop-influenced Stax group that recorded several influential and beloved R&B hits in the 1960s, has died. He was 73.
Proudly and fiercely independent, Williams led an often tumultuous life that was notable for more than music.
Williams’ Stax career was interrupted by service in Vietnam, where he participated in dangerous deep-jungle combat missions. Returning home, he joined the Invaders, a so-called “militant” group inspired by the Black Panthers that was especially active during the sanitation strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, where the civil rights leader was murdered in 1968.
As the singer himself put it, in the title of a 1973 single he recorded for Stax: “The Whole Damn World Is Going Crazy.”
Williams was found dead Tuesday morning at his home, not too far from the Soulsville neighborhood where the Stax Museum of American Soul Music is located. He had been in poor health for some time, and lost his voice following an operation last year for throat cancer.
“The irony of a singer losing his voice can’t be underestimated,” said journalist and former Memphian John Hubbell, who is finishing a documentary feature film on Williams. “He couldn’t sing, he couldn’t talk.”
Consisting of Williams, Julius E. Green, William Brown and Robert Phillips, the Mad Lads represented an early attempt by Stax to make inroads on the East Coast, where male vocal harmony groups were especially popular. Following a 1964 novelty single (“The Sidewalk Surf”/”Surf Jerk”), the group had back-to-back R&B hits in 1965 and 1966 with “Don’t Have to Shop Around” and “I Want Someone,” released on the Volt label, an imprint of Stax.
Williams’ supple lead tenor — a coaxing, insinuating, sometimes sorrowful instrument — was central to the appeal of the group, which specialized in love songs that alternated between hope and heartbreak: “I Want a Girl,” “Tear-Maker,” “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love.”
“The Mad Lads were a huge anomaly at Stax, because they sounded like a Northern soul group,” said Memphis musician Scott Bomar, who produced Williams’ final recordings, and whose band, the Bo-Keys, performed with Williams many times starting in about 2004. “They were huge in Philly and Chicago, and are still huge on the West Coast-East L.
