Jesse Boyce

Singer, songwriter, producer, instrumentalist, bandleader, businessman and entertainer Jesse Boyce has died at age 69.

For more than four decades, Boyce was a cornerstone figure of Music City’s r&b and gospel industries. He wrote, sang and/or produced some of the most prominent soul and disco hits ever made in Nashville.

An alumnus of Leadership Music, Boyce was associated with such top stars as The Temptations, Little Richard, Peabo Bryson, Shirley Caesar, Wilson Pickett and Teddy Pendergrass.

Born in 1948, Jesse Boyce was a native of North Carolina. As a high-school student in Greensboro, SC, he was classically trained on piano, organ, drums, guitar and bass. After earning a degree from American Baptist College in Nashville, he became a top session musician in Muscle Shoals, AL.
As a bass player in The FAME Gang of session players, he backed Candi Staton, Wilson Pickett, Bobbie Gentry, Clarence Carter and many other top stars. The FAME Gang (featuring Boyce) also made records under its own name, including 1969’s “Grits and Gravy” and “Soul Feud.”

During the 1960s, Jesse Boyce began a long association with guitarist/producer Moses Dillard (1947-1993), initially in the r&b group The Dynamic Showmen. Their next band, Moses Dillard & The TexTown Display, featured future star Peabo Bryson.

Boyce began writing and recording in Nashville in 1972. He formed the soul band Bottom & Co., which was signed to Motown Records in 1973. This made Bottom & Co. the first modern Nashville black act on a major label.

He wrote and sang “You’re My Life” (1974) and “Here for the Party” (1975), which made lower reaches of the soul charts for the group. Its Rock Bottom LP was issued in 1976.

Moses Dillard moved to Nashville that year. He and Boyce resumed their musical partnership. Working under the billing The Saturday Night Band, they scored a No. 2 disco hit with Boyce’s written and sung “Come On, Dance, Dance” in early 1978.

Continuing as a studio group, this time billed as The Constellation Orchestra, they hit the disco top-10 again that summer with “Perfect Love Affair.”

Meanwhile, Bill Brandon scored a 1978 top-30 hit on the r&b charts with “We Fell in Love While Dancing,” co-written and co-produced by Dillard and Boyce. In early 1979, Dillard and Boyce co-produced the big Lorraine Johnson disco hits “Feed the Flame” and “Learning to Dance All Over Again.”

This time billed as Dillard & Boyce, the team again gained its own spotlight by issuing their We’re In This Thing Together album on Mercury Records in 1980. Boyce sang lead and wrote or co-wrote all but one of its tunes.

With the disco ensemble dubbed Frisky, Boyce hit the dance charts again with “You Got Me Dancing in My Sleep” and “Burn Me Up” in 1980. He next joined the soul trio Spunk, with whom he made the r&B charts via “Get What You Want” in 1981. Jesse Boyce was the writer, lead singer and co-producer of this group, which reportedly sold four million records in the U.K.

In 1982, he hit No. 1 on the disco/dance charts via Linda Clifford’s version of “Let It Ride,” which he wrote and produced. Over the years, Jesse Boyce’s songs have also been recorded by The Temptations, Ben E. King, The Dells, The Commodores, The Impressions, O.C. Smith, Bloodstone, David Ruffin and The Chi-Lites, among others.

In addition, he became a sought-after session musician on Music Row. As a bass player, keyboardist and/or backup singer, Boyce recorded with Crystal Gayle, Dr. John, John Hiatt, Mickey Newbury, Shirley Caesar, Millie Jackson, Albertina Walker, Lou Rawls, Lonnie Mack, The Osmonds, The Mighty Clouds of Joy and more. He won a NARAS Super Picker Award honoring Nashville’s top session sidemen.

In 1983, Jesse Boyce was signed as a solo artist by Nashville’s Compleat Records. He issued “Bluer Than Blue” (1983) and “It’s Your Chance (To Break Dance)” (1984) for the label. This is also when he became the lead singer for the nostalgic golden-oldie bands The Marvels and The Sons of the Beach.

Around 1986, he began his 30-year tenure as the bass player for Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame legend Little Richard.

He resumed his education at Vanderbilt’s Divinity School and at Memphis Theological Seminary. He composed and recorded soundtrack music for a number of religious documentary films. Boyce eventually became the music minister at Gordon Memorial United Methodist Church in North Nashville.

He and Dillard co-produced the 1991 Warner Bros. Records gospel CD by New Faith. This group was composed of inmates at the Tennessee State Prison who were serving life sentences. Boyce sang backup on the record and co-wrote four of its tunes. This disc included guest appearances by Sam Moore of Sam & Dave fame, plus soul star Teddy Pendergrass.

He was selected for Leadership Music in 1992 and graduated from the program in 1993.

In more recent years, Jesse Boyce had established his Sovereign Music Group and founded the Midtown Music Academy for at-risk children in North Nashville.

He was diagnosed with advanced-stage prostate cancer in 2003.

Boyce released his final CD, The Messenger, in 2013 billed as Jesse Boyce & Vision.

When his cancer resumed and spread in 2016, he agreed to have his story told in the documentary film Intentional Healing. It premiered at the Nashville Film Festival earlier this year. It includes footage of him recording his song “Dance Again” with Phil Hughley (Gtar Phil) and UMG’s Black Violin.

Jesse Boyce died on Thursday, Aug. 17. He is survived by his wife Asieren; by children Jesse, Rosalind, Walden and Adrienne; by brother Tommy James and sister Dorothy Harris; by five grandchildren and by four great-grandchildren.

Donations are requested to Midtown Music Academy (P.O. Box 233, Madison, TN 37116) or to the Jesse Boyce Music Chair at the Reclamation Center Inc. (2334 Herman St. Nashville, TN 37208).

Sun Records artist Sonny Burgess, one of the last of the original rockabilly stylists, has died at age 88. Burgess passed away on Friday, Aug. 18, in Little Rock, Arkansas. He became a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 2002.

He was born Albert Burgess Jr. in 1929 and was playing country music in his Newport, Arkansas hometown by the time he reached his early 20s. Elvis Presley came there to perform and promote his debut Sun single in 1955. Burgess was inspired and dramatically changed his style in imitation of Presley.

He also went to Memphis to audition for Presley’s label. Sonny Burgess’ Sun debut was the wildly energetic “We Wanna Boogie” / “Red Headed Woman” of 1956. Both sides of the disc are considered to be rockabilly classics.

He followed his debut with another strong rocker, 1957’s “Ain’t Got a Thing.” But this failed to duplicate the success of his first single. The third Burgess Sun single was a rockabilly version of “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It.” Teen idol Ricky Nelson copied it, sold a million with it and drowned the Burgess original in 1958. Next, Burgess tried the rockabilly instrumentals “Itchy” and “Thunderbird.” These failed, too.

He and his band The Pacers toured with many of the top Sun acts, including Johnny Cash, Warren Smith and Jerry Lee Lewis. On the road with Roy Orbison, they did double duty by serving as his backing band.

Sonny Burgess & The Pacers were crazed, flamboyant stage personalities. Their antics included charging into audiences in a rocking frenzy, forming a human pyramid, rolling around on their backs while playing and dragging one another across stages.

They also did The Bug. This involved one band member picking up an imaginary bug and throwing it on another. The one “bugged” would flail around wildly, scratching and itching while continuing to play. He’d then toss the “bug” onto another, and the gesticulating would escalate. Then they’d involve the audience in the same game.

Other gymnastics included doing make-believe Indian dances. When Burgess would leap high into the air and let out a blood-curdling scream, it was a signal for the band to rock even harder.

At one point, Burgess dyed his hair red and costumed himself in red suede shoes, red socks, red slacks, a red shirt and a red tuxedo jacket. These matched his red Fender guitar.

But the lack of a big hit record demoralized The Pacers by the end of the 1950s. After serving a stint in Conway Twitty’s band, Sonny Burgess & The Pacers broke up. Burgess reverted to singing country and r&b music in the 1960s, but in 1972 he quit the music business.

He was a salesman for a fabric company for more than a decade. Then, in 1986, Burgess and a group of Sun session musicians performed at the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C. Billed as the Sun Rhythm Section, they also did a popular, two-week stint in one of the city’s nightclubs.

This led to further festival appearances, European tours and a Sun Rhythm Section CD. Then Burgess embarked on a series of solo comeback albums with Raw Deal (1986), Spellbound (1989), I’m Still Here (1990) and The Razorback Rock & Roll Tapes (1992). In 1992, Dave Alvin of The Blasters produced an especially acclaimed Sonny Burgess CD titled Tennessee Border.

In 1996, Gary Tallent of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band brought Burgess to Nashville to record the album Sonny Burgess Has Still Got It for Rounder Records. The CD’s cast included Billy Livsey, Roy Husky Jr., Scotty Moore and The Jordanaires. As he did “back in the day,” Burgess supplied his own lead-guitar licks.

His career revival continued with the CDs God’s Holy Light (1997), Tupelo Connection (2001), Back to Sun Records (2003) and Tear It Up (2006). He formed a new version of The Pacers and recorded a 2007 CD titled Gijon Stomp! Then Live at Sun Studios appeared in 2012.

In 2015, Sonny Burgess returned to Nashville as the headliner at the opening of a Sun Records exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame. On stage to celebrate “Flying Saucers Rock & Roll: The Cosmic Genius of Sam Phillips,” Burgess proved that his powerful growling voice and fiery guitar playing were undimmed by time.

Last month, Sonny Burgess fell at his home and was hospitalized. He died at Little Rock’s Baptist Health Medical Center, He is survived by a son, John Burgess. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.