gospel singer; songwriter; choral conductor
Personal Information
Born c. 1962 in Durham, NC; married Felice Sampson, December of 1995; two children
Education: North Carolina School for the Arts, Winston-Salem, NC, 1970s; attended Yuba College Conservatory, Marysville, CA, 1970s; studied with Rev. James Cleveland in gospel music workshop, 1985.
Religion: Christian.
Career
Cameo, Donald Byrd, and other acts, California, backup musician, late 1970s; Miss Black Universe beauty pageant, musical ensemble member, 1980s; New Life Community Choir, founder and choral leader, mid-1980s-; gospel recording artist, 1989-; New Life Fellowship Church, Charlotte, NC, founder and pastor, 1990s-.
Life's Work
A number of gospel artists in the 1990s and early 2000s enriched the music's vocabulary with elements of hip-hop and R&B styles; figures such as Kirk Franklin and BeBe and CeCe Winans appealed to secular audiences and placed recordings in the top ranks of general sales charts. Perhaps no other gospel artist, however, absorbed urban styles as directly as John P. Kee, who lived the violent events described in many hip-hop pieces and then made sense of his experiences in gospel music. Kee and his New Life Community Choir were gospel favorites and consistent award winners over much of the 1990s.
John Prince Kee was born in Durham, North Carolina, around 1962 (that date is listed on the All Music website, but other accounts give ages for dates later in Kee's life that do not correspond with that birthdate). The 15th of 16 children, he grew up in a religious household where his father encouraged all his offspring to sing. The last of six boys, Kee put a lot of effort into getting his father's attention, and he developed into a child prodigy who quickly mastered the piano, flute, and drums. Kee was sent to the North Carolina School for the Arts in nearby Winston-Salem, and he graduated at age 14. He had already formed and led his first gospel choir.
Quickly Entered California Recording Scene
Together with his older brothers Al and Wayne, Kee headed for California to study music at the Yuba College Conservatory. His talents were noticed immediately, and he began to drift away from gospel and to perform with jazz musicians such as Donald Byrd and with pop acts like vocalist Phyllis Hyman and the funk group Cameo. Kee had both the musical chops and the adult demeanor to keep up, even though he was only in his mid-teens, but he lacked emotional maturity to handle the pressures of the music world.
"I was a spoiled brat," Kee told the New York Daily News. "I could call down from my room to a club and get any kind of money I wanted for what I did. I took advantage of it and I loved it. It was rewarding, and I really had my mind on my craft, but there was the sidetrack part: the clubs, the exposure." Soon, Kee recalled, he was "caught up in drugs and the whole nine." In 1980 Kee returned to North Carolina and settled in Charlotte, but the homecoming didn't put his life back on track. Indeed, it made things even worse.
For a time, Kee made money performing in the Ms. Black Universe beauty pageant, but he hungered for the easy money he had known as a teenage musical phenomenon. "In California, there was so much money to be made," he told the Daily News. "When I moved back East, it was a lifestyle change. I couldn't get work, so I got the lifestyle I was accustomed to in the street." Soon Kee was dealing cocaine out of a small grocery store in Charlotte's Double Oaks neighborhood.
Friend's Murder Sparked Return to Religion
The turning point in Kee's life came in June of 1981 when he witnessed the murder of his best friend in a drug deal gone bad. Kee announced a new commitment to Christianity at a Charlotte revival held by the Rev. Jim Bakker's PTL ministry, and soon he was making music in church once again and had founded the group of ex-addict and former prostitute singers that developed into the New Life Community Choir. An early indication of things to come was visible when Kee showed up as vocalist on two separate tracks on the annual mass choir compilation of the Gospel Music Workshop of America--the first time any vocalist, let alone an unknown, had been so honored.
Kee was able to launch a national career after he penned a successful song called "Jesus Lives in Me" for gospel giant Edwin Hawkins and invested the profits in his own music. A debut album under the New Life Community Choir designation, Yes Lord, was followed by a solo debut, Wait on Him, in 1989. By the early 1990s Kee and the choir (he continued to mix solo and choral releases) were racking up gospel-industry Stellar Awards, of which he eventually earned more than a dozen. Numerous other awards flowed Kee's way, and gradually, as Kee moved from the small Tyscot label to the gospel industry leader Verity and finally recorded several albums for the secular label Jive, he began to gain fans from outside the usual gospel community.
The 1995 Show Up album, recorded with the New Life Community Choir, earned Kee the first of two Grammy nominations and was certified gold for sales of 500,000 copies. Around this time, Kee became one of the standard bearers for the trend of incorporating contemporary urban sounds, hip-hop above all, into gospel. "You need that," Kee explained to the Daily News. "Then you're still touching the lives of the masses. Keep a traditional vocal arrangements, add a back beat, and the babies enjoy the beat, grandma loves the lyrics, and we're all happy." Some compared Kee to earlier gospel crossover figures such as the Rev. James Cleveland, with whom Kee studied in a 1985 workshop, and even the father of gospel, Thomas A. Dorsey, whose music was strongly influenced by secular blues.
Songs Referred to Personal Experiences
Kee demurred at such comparisons, but there is no doubt that he used hip-hop effectively in order to communicate his personal voyage from street violence to Christian redemption. "It could have been me/Still selling drugs, pulling triggers on the street/Lighting up the night like a butane flicker/I was smooth and you couldn't trick the tricker," Kee rapped in "It Could Have Been Me," a song from his Colorblind album.
Kee and the New Life Community Choir continued as major forces in the gospel scene through the late 1990s and early 2000s. The 1997 album Strength gained Kee another Grammy nomination, and 2000's Not Guilty ... The Experience adapted the semi-dramatic, narrative structure of many contemporary hip-hop albums to a gospel message. The album, noted All Music's Stacia Proefrock, was "a sort of gospel opera outlining the path to redemption through song." Kee followed that album up with 2002's Blessed by Association.
Increasingly, however, Kee was branching out into other activities. He applied his long years of musical experience as the producer of albums by other artists, including Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Inner City, and Drea Randle. Most importantly, he built and became pastor of the New Life Fellowship Center in Charlotte, expanding the church's ministry into community projects such as a homeless shelter, after-school tutoring, and food distribution for the hungry. "There is so much hurting and suffering in the world," the man now known as Pastor Kee observed on his website, "that the only way not to be overwhelmed by it, is to know that you are doing something about it."
Awards
Selected: Grammy nominations for Show Up, 1995, and Strength, 1997; numerous Stellar awards; gold record for Show Up.
Works
Selected discography
- Yes Lord, Verity, 1987.
- There Is Hope, Tyscot, 1990.
- Churchin' Christmas, Tyscot, 1992.
- Never Shall Forget, Verity, 1994.
- Show Up! Verity, 1995.
- Stand, Jive, 1995.
- Christmas Album, Verity, 1996.
- Thursday Love, Verity, 1997.
- Strength, Verity, 1997.
- Any Day, Verity, 1998.
- Not Guilty ... The Experience, Verity, 2000.
- Blessed by Association, Verity, 2002.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Chicago Sun-Times, June 8, 1994, p. 45.
- Daily News (New York), June 9, 1996, p. 35; June 13, 1996, p. 47.
- Washington Post, December 4, 1996, p. C4.
- "Biography," Official John P. Kee Website, www.johnpkee.com (October 10, 2003).
- "John P. Kee," All Music, www.allmusic.com (October 10, 2003).
— James M. Manheim
