John Robert Lee Bradley was born in Memphis, Tennessee on October 5, 1919. He was raised by his mother and grew up with not much money but with a great deal of love. “Born in an alley, reared in an alley,” Bradley left school after the third grade. In the book, “ A Wealth of Wisdom: Legendary African American Elders Speak,” he recounted the following experience: As a 12-year old, he stood outside the city auditorium in Memphis, at a National Baptist Convention Christmas Eve program where poor children singing in a church choir would be given clothes and Christmas stockings. “I sang my way in there,” he said. He started singing outside the door, and a policeman brought out the convention’s music director, Lucie Campbell, a pioneering gospel songwriter who would become Mr. Bradley’s mentor. He recalled that the policeman asked her, “What do you hear?” and she replied, “I hear an angel singing.”
In her position as music director for the National Baptist Convention’s Congress, Campbell intorduced young promising talent and auditioned musicians to appear before the convention’s audiences such as Marian Anderson, Thomas A. Dorsey, and Mahalia Jackson. Ms. Campbell organized the Good Will Singers, an important gospel quartet of the 1930s that toured nationally, with Mr. Bradley as lead singer. During his youth, Bradley toured with the Hall Johnson Singers, and as a concert soloist. In the early 1940s he decided to study classical music. He moved first to New York and then to London, where he stayed for six years. His concert career carried him across Europe and the Americas. His classical voice training allowed him to sing in German, French, and other languages throughout the great concert halls of the world. Despite his extensive concert career, he never left gospel music. But he also performed steadily in churches, universities, several Baptist World Alliance appearances where he was known as Mr. Baptist. He recorded his first gospel single for the Apollo label in 1950 and went on to record for Decca. In later years he recorded for Nashboro and Spirit Feel / Shanachie. One of his proudest moments was being knighted Sir J. Robert Bradley by the President of Liberia, William Tolbert.
When Ms. Campbell died in 1963, Mr. Bradley succeeded her as director of music for the National Baptist Convention and worked for many years in the Nashville office of the Baptist Sunday School Publishing Board. He was the first African American to study at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tennessee. Mahalia Jackson, who said Bradley had the greatest voice she had ever heard, also said, “Nobody need mess with ‘Amazing Grace’ after Bradley gets through with it,” and gospel songs like Lucie Campbell’s “He’ll Understand and Say Well Done.” In 1972, when he sang at Mahalia Jackson’s funeral, Chicago’s Aerie Crown Theater was practically transformed into a storefront church. The Chicago papers carried photos of people collasping in front of Mayor Richard Daley. His memoir, “In the Hands of God,” appeared in 1993 and was produced by the Rev. Amos Jones. The street where Bradley grew up was renamed in honor of him by the city of Memphis.
He transitioned on May 3, 2007 and is survived by a nephew, Robert Van Bradley (Sheila); Grand Nephew and Niece, Robert Van Bradley Jr., and Latoyna Lowe. In recent years, he was greatly helped by Janice Dillard, and many other members of his church. Mr. Jeffery Mobley has faithfully served as his personal attorney and Chris Jackson has been a long-term personal aid. J. Robert Bradley will long be remembered by scores of faithful friends as a man with a big voice and an even bigger heart. He sang his way into a musical and spiritual love affair with the whole world. He now fully realizes the title of his book and is at rest, at last, in the hands of God.
[Written by: Anthony Heilbut (Producer and friend) & John Pareles (N.Y. Times)]
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