I featured on a lot of the Canton Spirituals’ recordings. At the time the Cantons were not a very popular group, all of that came later, after their records on Blackberry Records. I was with him for about a year, but there was one particular concert we did in Selma, Alabama and the Canton Spirituals were there and they saw me perform with Leonard and they approached me about possibly being part of their group and I auditioned and all that and it happened from there. I worked at the label as well as part of his touring group. How I came to the group’s attention was I was working with one of the Williams Brothers, LaMorris Williams, his dad is Leonard Williams who is one of the Williams Brothers, another famous gospel group, and I was working for Leonard and his record company Melinda Records and Leonard was still trying to tour as a solo artist, but mostly he was involved with his record label. He was one of the originals with the group. Theo Thompson was with them but he has left he was an older gentleman and he retired from the travelling. They have had different musicians come along but the main core remains the same. He passed away, I think in 1993, from cancer. Back when I started with them, Harvey Watkins’ dad Harvey Watkins Sr, was with them.
During my period with the Canton Spirituals it was the same singer that they have in the group now, the lead singer is Harvey Watkins Jr, his nephew Cornelius Dwayne Watkins and Merlin Lucious are the three main guys in the group. That kinda prepared me and taught me all I needed to know about the music business including how not to get taken advantage of, because that goes on in gospel music just like it does in any other music. We went to Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, Jamaica and all over. Two Grammy nominations I don’t know how many Stellar awards, maybe twelve or fourteen, and we toured the world extensively. I started with them when I was nineteen and we had a great deal of success.
After that I went to college for six months and then I got an opportunity to try out for a gospel group called The Canton Spirituals and I ended up travelling, and touring with, and recording with them for about seventeen years. There were a couple of churches the first was New McRaven Hill Church in Jackson and the second was Hardy Grove Church.Īfter I got about sixteen years old, I joined a local gospel group called the B&B Singers from Raymond, Mississippi in the eighties and one of the other singers in the group was Rick Lawson who has done some stuff for ECKO. I was the piano player for my church for most of my teenage years. My mother and grandparents were very religious so we grew up in church and did a lot of church things as kids, and that’s where my love for music started. My given name is Victor Allen and I was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi and I come from a single parent home and I have one younger brother. Many thanks go to Peggy Brown for arranging the interview.
Interview conducted by Mike Stephenson in Jackson, Mississippi, June 2013.