In the late 1950s, a New Orleans songwriter named Dorothy LaBostrie heard a voice drifting up through her floorboards from the apartment below, where Laten John Adams Jr. was singing in the bathtub. She knocked on his door and convinced the gospel singer to go secular, launching the career of Johnny Adams, The Tan Canary, a vocalist with a multi-octave range and a falsetto that masked the break between chest and head voice. Born in 1932, the oldest of 10 children, Adams honed his endurance in gospel groups like the Soul Revivers and Bessie Griffin's Consolators before recording LaBostrie's ballad I Won't Cry in 1959 for the Ric label, produced by a teenage Mac Rebennack, the future Dr. John.

This deep dive follows Adams through the 1962 national hit A Losing Battle, the collapse of Ric Records after founder Joe Ruffino's death, his wilderne ...