Willie Headen & The Birds

Though he never had a substantial national hit, Willie Headen made a series of respectable R&B records in the mid- to late '50s in a small combo piano-based style, though that approach was getting slightly out of fashion with the onset of rock & roll. Headen began his career in gospel music and formed his own group to sing at churches in Austin, TX, later joining the Kansas City Gospel Singers, though he doesn't appear on their early-'50s recordings. Moving to Los Angeles in the early '50s, he was working as a shoeshine man in the Watts neighborhood when he caught the attentio...