Today marks the birthday of Little Willie John, whose meteoric career as America’s greatest soul singer was impossibly short and inconceivably tragic.

John was born in Camden, Arkansas in 1937. His father, Mertis, moved the family to Detroit, where there were jobs to be had in the automobile plants. Even as a small boy, Willie was an eerily precocious singer who could focus his gift like a cool, seasoned performer. His voice was a bred-in-the-bone treasure that was startlingly powerful, elastic, and full of emotion.

By the time Willie was 11 he had a regular gig at the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit. Three years later he was occasionally fronting the Count Basie band and appearing regularly with Paul Williams’ orchestra. In 1955 an eighteen-year-old Willie John strode into the offices of King Records in Cincinnati and asked for an audition. He left with a recording contract. Before the year was out John (now billed as “Little Willie John”) had scored two monster hit records: “All Around the World” and “Need Your Love So Bad.”

Over the next five years, there would be 13 Top-Ten singles for Willie John, including “Fever,” about which James Brown once said, “‘Fever’ will beat what any dictionary can say about soul.” Peggy Lee cloned John’s sparse, finger-snapping arrangement and had one of the biggest records of the decade with it

Many of John’s hits were sassy blues shuffles, but he seemed to save something extra for his ballad performances. On unhurried masterpieces like “Talk To Me” and “A Cottage For Sale,” John’s voice, with its seemingly unlimited range, relentlessly hip phrasing, the ability to grab hold of an unadorned melody and take it to a stunning territory all his own, and—the trademark of all great r&b vocalists—an overriding tone of bluesy regret.

In performance, Willie John came across as a kind of black Bing Crosby, even down to the pipe. In his homburg hats and tailored, wide-shouldered suits and with his five-foot-four-inch frame, he looked like a boy who had just stepped out of his father’s clothes closet. But when the lights went down and he took the microphone, his head would roll back dreamily and a huge, aching sound would fill the hall.

John married an Apollo showgirl and the couple had two sons. Away from his family out on the road, John’s behavior began to disintegrate. “He was a riot, a constant riot all day long,” recalled one friend. He was careless with his money and racked up large debts.

Then, suddenly, after only six years, when Willie was only twenty-three, the hits dried up. He was busted for marijuana possession in Florida in 1961. He began drinking heavily, which exacerbated the epilepsy he had suffered from all his life and brought on diabetes. He began carrying a gun. Charged with assault in Miami in 1964, Willie John jumped bail and began a series of one-nights on the West Coast. In August John learned that the Beatles had covered his “Leave My Kitten Alone” in the studio, but their powerful version ended up being pulled from the “Beatles For Sale” album.

In 1990, spurred by reminiscences of Willie John by a mutual friend, Seattle-based musician Bill Englehart, I researched and wrote a long piece for The Village Voice about the events that took place over the weekend of October 16 and 17 in Seattle that culminated in Willie John being charged with murder. There were only a few sketchy newspaper accounts, and there was no transcript of Willie’s trial, but I found a court docket that listed the names of all the attorneys, the judge, and the jurors. I got out a Seattle phone book as was able to contact and interview John’s defense attorney, the two prosecutors, and two members of the jury, and from those accounts I was able to piece together what happened on the night of October 17, 1964.

After his show the Magic Inn that night, John showed up at Birdland, another club, and sang a few tunes. John and his valet and two female acquaintances then ended up at a house on 23rd and Marion in the black neighborhood of Seattle, where the owner ran an illegal after-hours drinking and gambling establishment. There were about a half dozen patrons there.

Willie John’s female companion left her seat at the makeshift bar to use the bathroom, and when she returned a man named Kendall Roundtree had taken her seat. Roundtree was a large man with long arrest record who liked to fight, especially when he was drunk, which he was in the wee hours of Sunday morning in the house on 23rd.

John told Roundtree to give up his seat to the lady. Roundtree responded by punching the much smaller man in the teeth. John backpedaled into the kitchen and Roundtree came at him. As three men in the room grabbed Roundtree, Willie John grabbed a small paring knife off a drainboard and stabbed Roundtree in the chest with it. Roundtree’s handlers managed to propel Roundtree upright through the living room, but before they reached the front door the big man collapsed, unconscious. The knife had just knicked Roundtree’s aorta, and he was quickly bleeding to death internally.

For about an hour the other patrons argued about what to do with him. They eventually called an ambulance, telling the EMTs that Roundtree must have had a heart attack. But one of the attendants noticed blood on Roundtree’s chest and called the police. John’s valet finger him as having stabbed Roundtree, and Little Willie John was charged with second-degree murder.

Little Willie John’s murder trial in Seattle started on January 12, 1965 and lasted three days. John appeared relaxed throughout, occasionally joking with prosecutors during breaks. “Willie offered to sell me a record once,” recalled prosecutor Thomas Stang. “I remember one day he called me ‘colored.’ ‘You’re the one who’s colored,’ he said. ‘Look—you got yellow hair and blue eyes and white skin. I’m brown all over.’” When he testified, John denied stabbing Roundtree, contradicting by other witnesses. The jury retired for deliberations after John took the stand. Their initial straw vote was 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. According to one juror, “The general feeling was that something was being covered up. Willie John was a little slick and overconfident. He thought he could talk his way out of it.” Seven hours later, the jury returned to the courtroom to announce that they had found Willie John guilty of manslaughter with a deadly weapon. They rejected the second-degree murder charge because John had reacted to Roundtree’s initial attack.

Little Willie John posted a $20,000 bond and promptly left Seattle. A benefit performance to help with his defense fund was arranged in Indianapolis, but John never made the gig. Bill Lanning, his defense attorney, filed for appeal, but John fired him not long after and it is unclear whether John actively pursued an appeal. Remarkably, in February of 1966 Little Willie John managed to show up in Los Angeles to record an album for Capitol Records in Los Angeles, but it wasn’t released until 2008 due to contractual disputes with King Records.

there is no evidence that his appeal was pursued. He was tracked down by U.S. marshals in early May and returned to Seattle. On July 6, 1966 Little Willie John was sentenced to eight to twenty years in prison, with a minimum sentence of seven and a half years, and transferred to the state prison in Walla Walla. “It was really unjust that Little Willie got so much time in jail, compared to some of the really heavy cases we add,” prosecutor Art Swanson told me.

Many of John’s show business friends rallied behind him. James Brown, who worked to get him released, visited Willie in prison.

“Me and James went up to the penitentiary,” recalled St. Clair Pickney, Brown’s bandleader. “He said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to get out of here.’ He and been sick and was riding in a wheelchair. James would get kind of upset, and Willie would say ‘Don’t ever let it worry you that way, ‘cause I might not come out no way. If I get out, I get out. If I stay, I stay. Still gonna be the same man in or out of here.’”

On May 28, 1968, the Seattle Times ran the following article:

WALLA WALLA (AP)—A rock-and-roll and blues singer who helped write the popular song “Fever” died in his sleep Sunday at the Washington State penitentiary, authorities said today. He was Willie John, 30, known in the entertainment world as Little Willie John. William Macklin, associate superintendent at the prison, said John was found dead with a mild case of pneumonia.

It was an odd story, and many thought the worst. There have been persistent rumors that Willie John died after an operation meant to relieve pressure on his brain following a savage beating.

Bill Lanning didn’t believe the papers. “Somebody killed him over there. He was tough and arrogant. He didn’t like for anybody to be on equal footing with him.”

“When someone is badly beaten, fluid often forms in the lungs,” Art Swanson told me. “Pneumonia can be a handy diagnosis in those situations.”

John’s death certificate states that he died of a heart attack.

But the real mystery—and the real magic—was John would tilt his head back in controlled rapture and unleash a voice that would galvanize anyone within its huge range.

James Brown—who recorded a tribute album to John after John’s death—never forgot that voice. As he told writer Gerri Hirshey: “Please, do not forget the man I was opening for in 1956, ’57. Little Willie John was a soul singer before anyone thought to call it that…The man left his mark. On my music, on lots of singers who understand how to sing with feeling…Willie John did not scream it. No. But you could hear it. To me, it was very loud…I don’t understand why people miss Sam Cooke so, and not Little Willie John. I loved that man’s voice to death.”

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If you’re not familiar with Little Willie John’s legendary recordings, you must—immediately—check out his classic recordings for King Records. His 1966 album for Capitol is also available and is a solid effort to update John’s earlier work for a younger audience.

Susan Whitall’s excellent biography, Fever: Little Willie John—A Fast Life, Mysterious Death, and the Birth of Soul (Titan Books, 2011) is the authoritative account of Little Willie John’s life, career, and influence.