Rest In Peace John Wyker

[Guest Paul]

Shocked to hear that John Wyker was found dead at his home in Muscle Shoals on Sunday morning.

He was a one-off character with a strong musical history and of course he was a close friend and producer of the late Eddie Hinton.

It isn't long since I last spoke with John and he seemed okay so I've no idea what happened.

Rest in peace.

Edited December 9, 2013 by Paul

[Sunnysoul]

Paul

 

Johnny Wyker co-wrote one of my favourite soul tunes and one of the first soul records I ever bought , "Let Love Come Between Us" by James & Bobby Purify on Stateside.

 

As a kid you sometimes remember the most insignificant things and the composers' names always remained in my memory to this day "Wyker - Sobotka " probably because their names were a  little unusual, not Hayes Porter or Holland Dozier !!!

 

So when you posted this topic and I saw the heading I knew immediately who it was about.

 

Did a little digging just now and found out a little bit of info on Johnny Wyker. As you indicated above, Johnny Wyker was one of those white southern country boys with a whole lot of soul:

 

"Let Love Come Between Us" was originally recorded by the Alabama group The Rubber Band earlier in 1967, and written by their members Joe Sobotka and Johnny Wyker. The Rubber Band was fronted by Johnny Townsend, who later had a hit with "Smoke From A Distant Fire" as half of the Sanford-Townsend Band. Townsend told us how the group came together: "My first experience in recording in Muscle Shoals area was at a studio over in Sheffield with Marlin Green. The recording was essentially a demo to help us get gigs. We recorded some James Brown and Otis Redding songs, about 8 in all and had some acetates pressed up. I had been playing with a group of guys from Decatur and Tuscaloosa, The Rubber Band, and at the time, we were one of the most popular bands in Alabama even though we weren't doing it full time and most of us were still going to school. Later we started taking some of our gig money and going into the studio doing our songs we wrote ourselves, or by friends like Eddie Hinton. We recorded one of Eddie's songs called 'Down In Texas' at Rick Hall's FAME Studios. That's when I met Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham. They'd been having some success as songwriters and really inspired us to start writing our own songs. They all seemed like characters out of a dime novel at first. They were full time into music, something that also inspired us to want to do it full time. Some of the stuff we had been recording got heard by a big time New York producer named Charlie Calello and he brought us up to New York where we recorded a song written by two of our members, Johnny Wyker and Joe Sobotka called 'Let Love Come Between Us.' Our version on Columbia Records was considered a turntable hit in that it went to #1 in 20 major cities in the US. Columbia didn't get any records in the stores because they didn't even know it was their record. We were such novices in the business that it got by us and was gone before we knew it. It did however give us a taste of success and we wanted more. That song was later recorded by James and Bobby Purify and went up the charts."

The Purify's were the cousins James Purify and Robert Lee Dickey. They're biggest hit was "I'm Your Puppet" in 1966.

 

Other artists to record this song include Mavis Staples, Delbert McClinton and The Pointer Sisters.

Edited December 9, 2013 by sunnysoul