Little Willie John Gave Us “Fever”

It could be argued that Johnny Paycheck and Little Willie John were cut from the same cloth.  Both were charismatic but cantankerous singers who stood under 5’6”, knew their way around too many bars, and knew how to get under the skin of others.  In Johnny’s case, he put a bullet under the skin of Larry Wise after Johnny took it as an insult when Wise invited him to dine at his abode for a delicious deer meat and turtle soup dinner.  Willie also never took too kindly to perceived slights and was sentenced to 8-20 years for stabbing Kendall Roundtree to death after Kendall punched the singer in the mouth. But while Paycheck was pardoned after serving 22 months, Willie was caged in Washington State Prison for twenty months only to succumb at the age of 30; his death certificate noted he died from a massive heart attack.  However, the prison sent his wife, Darlynn, a telegram that stated he died from pneumonia.

Even the prosecutor in John’s trial, Art Swanson, believed Willie’s death certificate was a work of fiction. He recalled: “This is the one case I’ll never forget. It was a real weird cast of characters. We heard rumors about lots of well-connected people—city officials, prominent attorneys, and the like—who had been in that [after hours] house that day but we could never pin them down. One of our witnesses ended up in an insane asylum ‘unavailable for testimony’ when the trial got underway.”

Susan Whitall, author of Fever: Little Willie John — A Fast Life, Mysterious Death and the Birth of Soul, said of Willie’s early demise: “Art thinks it was ‘death by prison guard’ and that Willie probably mouthed off once too often.”  Bill Lanning, Willie’s lawyer, concurred: “Somebody killed him over there. He was tough and arrogant. He didn’t like for anybody to be on equal footing with him.”  But before Willie left this mortal coil, his smooth singing won over audiences. Even the man who put the singer behind bars.  Swanson admitted, “I really learned to like Little Willie. The guy was obviously very talented.”

Musicians sure recognized the guy’s talent. Peggy Lee’s memorable cover of “Fever” made Willie’s version obsolete.  Peggy took the finger-snapping that filled Willie’s song and created a monster hit. Throughout her career, Peggy often informed her audiences that if it wasn’t for Willie’s version, her signature song would have never been recorded.

 

Peggy wasn’t the only high-profile name who took a Little Willie song in a different direction.  John Lennon belted out a version of “Leave My Kitten Alone” that caused Tom Petty to wonder on his Buried Treasure Radio show, “I can’t understand why that never came out [on a Beatles’ album]. It’s an incredible vocal.”  The Beatles finally released it in 1995 on their Anthology 1 set.

Willie’s follow-up single was “A Cottage for Sale;” a heartbreaker of a song written in 1929.  Its flip side, “I’m Shaking,” was a key part of Jack White’s #1 hit album Blunderbuss. Jack’s 2012 single even gives a little shout-out to Willie’s “nervous” mispronunciation with a jumpy White  proclaiming, “I’m noy-vous!”

 

After a six-year run, the hits stopped for Willie but his rap sheet kept growing.  In 1961, he was arrested in North Carolina for possessing weed; three years later in Miami, he was charged with assault.

Author Susan Whitall stated, “Little Willie could be a little imp. He would do things like knock someone’s hat off and run off with it. He was constantly doing that with [singer] Jackie Wilson.” But he was one of those guys that no one could ever stay mad at for long—especially after hearing him sing.  Bobby Schiffman, the son of the Apollo Theater’s owner Frank Schiffman, may have been Willie’s biggest fan, gushing: “Willie was the best male singer I ever heard. He used to send chills up and down my spine and I never met a singer who had that kind of emotion and feeling in his songs. Willie would appear at the theater and I would stand in the wings and watch every show. He was incredible.”

Willie also impressed and befriended his opening act, James Brown.  Brown would later record a tribute album (Thinking About Little Willie John and a Few Nice Things) in 1968.

But no matter how much his family and friends pleaded for him to stop hitting the bottle, Little Willie wouldn’t. However, his voice left an indelible impression on a blind boy in Detroit.  Steveland Morris grew up, changed his name to “Stevie Wonder” and hired Willie’s sons, Kevin and Keith, to be his backup singers.

Like Stevie Wonder, Willie was churning out hits before he turned eighteen. But while Stevie became a legend, Willie landed in prison and in the R&R Hall of Fame, with Wonder inducting his idol.  Willie’s sister, Mable John, a fantastic singer herself and one of Ray Charles’ Raelettes, tried to comprehend her brother’s troubled life and acknowledged: “If you get into it so young, you don’t have a complete childhood. That’s what happened to Willie.”

-Mark Daponte

Fair use of Little Willie John, 1955