While building a chicken coop, Ioannis Veliotes injured his right hand on a chainsaw, paralyzing two fingers. That’s sad, you may think, but surely a guy with eight good fingers could still raise chickens. And you’d be right. However, poultry wasn’t Veliotes’ primary job. He was a famous rhythm and blues pianist, singer, and band leader.
You might not know him by his Greek name. He is better known as Johnny Otis. Let me tell you some things I admire about him.
He grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood in Berkeley, California. Though he was a white man (well, an olive-skinned Greek with dark hair and mustache), he allowed people to assume he was African-American. Professionally, he worked almost exclusively with black musicians and singers. He said, “As a kid, I decided that if our society dictated that one had to be black or white, I would be black.”
When he was 19 he married his childhood sweetheart, Phyllis Walker, who was 18. She was of African-American and Filipino descent. They had four children and their marriage lasted their whole lives.
He was in his late 20s when he injured his hand. Rather than give up music, he figured out how to play piano with eight fingers.
Though the injury to his hand caused him great pain, he refused to take painkillers because he had seen what addiction did to others and didn’t want to risk becoming addicted himself.
One night when he couldn’t sleep because of the pain in his hand, he got up and went for a walk. He came to a nightclub that was having a talent contest. One of the contestants was a 14-year-old girl named Esther Mae Washington. Otis offered her a j
Otis had a talent for discovering people with musical ability and helping them become successful. In addition to Esther Phillips, the list includes, to name a few, Etta James, Alan O’Day, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Ace, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Hank Ballard, and the Robins (who later became the Coasters).
He was a gifted songwriter. Among several dozen songs of his, you will find Willie and the Hand Jive, Every Beat of My Heart, and So Fine.
Otis liked to keep busy. Remember the chicken coop he was building in his 20s? Raising chickens was just one of the many side businesses he participated in during his long life. He always had two or three projects going outside of his career in music. In the early 1990s, for example, Otis opened an organic grocery store, decorating it with his own colorful murals.
Many refer to Johnny Otis as the Godfather of Rhythm & Blues.
He died in 2012 at the age of 90. His wife, Phyllis, outlived him by four years, dying in 2016 at the age of 94. They were buried side by side and share a headstone.
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