Joseph ‘Jo Jo’ Henry Wallace, 1925-2025: ‘I was Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Jo Jo rolled up in one’

But did he write ‘The Twist’?

By David McGee

Jo Jo Wallace, a gospel legend as the long-time guitarist-vocalist for the legendary Sensational Nightingales quintet led for many years by Julius Cheeks, crossed over on May 7, 2025, at age 98. The last surviving Nightingales member from the golden era, Wallace is credited with helping shape the modern gospel sound both as a smooth tenor vocalist and with his expressive guitar support. He also laid claim to having written “The Twist,” which was first recorded in 1958 by Hank Ballard and The Midnighters and two years later ignited an international dance craze in Chubby Checker’s chart topping 1960 version for Philadelphia’s Cameo-Parkway label. Wallace’s passing was reported by Darrell Luster, executive director of the gospel division for Malaco Music Group,

‘Somewhere to Lay My Head,’ a gospel standard written by Julius Cheeks, who joined the Nightingales as lead singer in 1946, the same year Jo Jo Wallace joined as guitarist. This is the original recording on Paramount with Cheeks singing lead. The legendary house wrecker Cheeks leads us to James Brown, to Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, to the Jive Five’s Eugene Pitt, to the Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs, to the Temptations’ David Ruffin, to “Wicked” Wilson Pickett, to Otis Redding, to the Persuaions’ Jerry Lawson…

‘Somewhere to Lay My Head,’ Sensational Nightingales with JoJo Wallace on lead guitar and tenor vocal, with Charles Johnson succeeding Julius Cheeks as lead singer.

Most of what is known about Wallace and the Nightingales emanates from two sources: the great gospel historian Tony Heilbut’s ne plus ultra work of gospel scholarship, The Gospel Sound; and British-born gospel historian-producer-radio host Opal Louis Nations’ group biography, Sensational Nightingales: The Story of “Jo Jo” Wallace and the Early Days of the Sensational Nightingales, published by Black Scat Books in 2014. Nations conducted extensive interviews with Wallace and with Wallace family members; he was also granted access to the invaluable archives of two gospel historian friends in documenting the origins of gospel’s golden era as it was shaped by one of the genre’s most important groups, and the role one of the Nightingales’ key members played in shaping the quintet’s distinctive sound and style.

‘To the End,’ Sensational Nightingales, with Julius Cheeks on lead vocal. Notice the vocal inflections—especially the chuckling and exclamations—that became a fixture of Otis Redding’s style.

Quite properly, Heilbut dives deep into the Nightingales history (“a gifted group”) during the years the quintet was led by one of the most influential male vocalists in gospel history: Julius “June” Cheeks, the epitome, Heilbut says, “of the hard gospel shouter, a gorgeous baritone splintered into hoarseness.” In late 1950 Cheeks joined what had been the Nightingales Quartet (then signed to the Newark, NJ-based Coleman label and managed by Dixie Hummingbirds founding member Barney L. Parks, who decided to move to the business side of gospel after returning from military service in 1945) and immediately injected high voltage into the group’s musical ministry. Cheeks’s impact was best summarized by original Nightingales member Harold Carroll, who, in a 2005 interview with writer Seamus McGarvey, said of the fiery vocalist: “June could come in a church or any place, and I don’t care what the (previous) groups had done, he could tear it down. When it come to spirit, June was powerful, June would move and whatnot, but he just had something that nobody else had.”

Through his business connections Parks landed the ‘Gales a recording deal with Decca Records, which brought the group into the commercial mainstream on the strength of its own recordings and in backing up Marie Knight on two productive sessions. Two years later, in 1952, personnel changes born of friction between the high-strung Cheeks and fellow first-generation ‘Gales Paul Owens and Harold Carroll found the latter pair taking their talents to the Dixie Hummingbirds; in turn the Hummingbirds’ hard-tenor lead singer Ernest James moved to the Nightingales lineup at the same time Jo Jo Wallace was hired as guitarist and high tenor lead. Smart moves all, Parks’s realignment would dramatically alter the quintet’s trajectory. Ernest James, Nations notes, “was quite a match for Cheeks, who found himself competing against a powerful sparring partner.” With this injection of fresh energy, “everything clicked” for the group, Heilbut notes, with the immediate result being “eight hit records in a row, all on Don Robey’s Peacock label. Their guitarist, Jo Jo Wallace, affected a sky-high pompadour and a hop-skip-jump choreography.” Reflecting on his persona within the group, Jo Jo proclaimed “I was Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Jo Jo rolled up in one.” Of the group’s sound, Heilbut praises their unique harmonies and  adds: “Jo Jo’s high, skinny tenor, all slurs and off-notes, combined sinuously with Carl Coates’s soft, rolling bass ‘boom-de-de-booms.’ The group could holler but their sound was basically clean and introspective, in pleasing contrast to Cheeks’s relentlessly hard lead.”

‘Burying Ground,’ The Sensational Nightingales, with Julius Cheeks on lead vocal. ‘…Chilling and satisfying and almost consoling.’

Heilbut cites a number of Nightingales recordings as transcendent performances, but really zeroes in on “Burying Ground,” in which “Cheeks’s baritone is resonant and exceptionally beautiful. The Gales sing high and loud, rising to a piercing plateau of ‘way over yonders’ while Cheeks enumerates al those gone: ‘I’ve got a mother, I’ve got a father.’ Midway through the list, Jo Jo changes the key on ‘yonder,’ and the shrill background becomes deeply moving. To some the climax is a lot of yelling, but as Cheeks gracefully drops from a screamed ‘way over yonder’ to a husky final ‘in the new burying ground,’ he’s summoned up any poor Southerner’s last trip. It’s chilling and satisfying and almost consoling.” Cheeks, Heilbut adds later, “was a superb musician in the recording studio.”

Singling out any one Nightingales recordings for the highest praise is a fool’s errand, but “See How They Done My Lord,” Cheeks’s variation on a traditional African-American gospel song centered on the final hours of Christ’s Passion, certainly ranks in every aspect with “Burying Ground” and any other towering entry in the Nightingales catalogue. First, the language: the title, appropriated from southern country talk, might presage something more bluesy, more raw, in the works. In fact, what ensues, though it retains the colloquial bent, is a solemn hymn in style but something else in execution. Darkness abounds. It begins with Jo Jo’s slow, arpeggiated minor chord, followed by a beat of silence before Julius enters a cappella, not breathing fire but wounded, horrified, and astounded all at once, crying, “Can’t you see how they done my”—until, on the word “Lord,” the other ‘Gales and what sounds like drums deep in the mix enter like rolling thunder, repeating “see how they done my Lord” once more. For two more stanzas the ‘Gales hum low and mournfully, with Cheeks interjecting “Whoa-oa” (a technique Sam Cooke was to borrow and practically make his trademark) before the ensemble unites again on “see how they done my Lord” and settles back into that ominous hum as Julius returns to moan, “Lord, have mercy on me.” This becomes the song’s connective tissue—low ensemble humming out of which Julius cries, “Whoa-oa,” then a slight pause before “Lord, have mercy on me.”

In some versions the song contains two verses directly addressing the flogging Christ endured as he carried his cross to Calvary. Cheeks omits those verses and instead goes straight to “They nailed him to the cross” in the first refrain as a prelude to three Crucifixion scenes on Calvary, repeating the opening couplet twice to set up the portentous trilogy of low humming, Cheeks’s “Whoa-oa” exclamation and the haunting, bass-heavy (John Jefferson at his most affecting) ensemble cry of “Lord, have mercy on me.” These scenes are:

“Jesus never said a mumbelin’ word/He never said a mumbelin’ word” (Julius buying a vowel [“e”] to add to “mumblin’”)

“Jesus hung his head and died/He hung his head and died”

Then the third and final chilling scene:

“Tell me two thieves were hanging beside him/two thieves were hanging besides him,” twice. Julius returns, at the 2:20 point of this 2:30 tableau, and breaks the song form by intoning, “One of them said”—and here all the ‘Gales unite for a deep, dark “Lord, have mercy on me.” At which point the soundscape goes, shall we say, deathly quiet—no cathartic resolution proclaiming prophecy being fulfilled or humankind’s impending salvation. What is fulfilled is the intent to immerse listeners in the horror and cruelty of the Crucifixion, making vivid and explicit the magnitude of suffering and abuse Christ endured in dying for his followers’ sins. We’ll never know why Julius ignored what Biblical scholars refer to as “The Last Seven Sayings of Jesus” on the cross, but in the language of “See What They Done to My Lord,” having Jesus not saying a “mumbelin’” word makes the dramatic point. Ending so abruptly as it does, a listener, if not brought to his knees, is left somewhere between dumbstruck and speechless, possibly quaking inwardly, owing to the ‘Gales brooking no romanticizing of Christianity’s defining event. Experiencing this as a listener, one never hears the sentiment, “Lord, have mercy on me” the same way ever again.

‘See How They Done My Lord,” The Sensational Nightingales

Born October 4, 1926 to John Wallace Sr. and Annie Bell Brown Wallace, farmers both in the bare-grass settlement of Williamston, Martin County, North-East in North Carolina, Joseph “Jo Jo” Henry Wallace was the youngest of seven children. When Jo Jo was six, his father was found dead in a sand-hole alongside two other men, none of the bodies bearing any sign of violence or trauma. The local paper reported the deaths as “unfortunate accidents,” which may in fact have been accurate. John Sr. and two of his friends ran their own trucking company, each with his own truck. Driving as a convoy, the trio would go from Williamston North to sandpits near Windsor, load up with sand and return to Williamston. The work was treacherous and sometimes deadly: in foul weather sand-holes would collapse and take loaders down to their deaths, as appeared to have happened to John Wallace and his partners. With the family patriarch gone, Jo Jo and his older siblings (save for his oldest brother, Buck, whom Jo Jo knew only by name and references to his existence) worked in cotton fields, while his mother brought in four dollars a bundle for cleaning, pressing and doing laundry for white families in the area.

‘Who Is That,’ Sensational Nightingales (1960), written by lead vocalist Julius Cheeks

Jo Jo’s path into music came by way of church hymns and the pump organ. His mother would take the kids to church on Sundays. As Jo Jo would balance on his mosther’s knee he would “listen to the congregation sing those beautiful old hymns that I grew to like so much,” he recalled to Nations. “Mama prayed for the welfare of the family. Believe it or not, young as I was, I can recall mama and daddy had an old pump organ given to us by a white family. It had side flaps you could open with your knees. The side flaps enabled an increase in volume when pumping the foot paddle, Mama would sit and play those beautiful old hymns and the words and music would really touch my heart. Those beautiful memories have stayed with me all my life. 

“During mama’s playing my older brother Gus would pick up the bass vocal part from the bass key while my oldest brother, Johnny (John Junior), would catch the appropriate notes given out by the baritone key. At the same time, almost by instinct, I was soon able to pick out the tenor. We rehearsed these parts until we were able to sing those beautiful hymns in perfect harmony. I have been asked many times the question where did you learn to sing tenor and I tell them I learned by picking up the scales of mama’s organ by ear.”

‘A Sinner’s Plea,’ The Sensational Nightingales, lead vocal by Ernest Johnson, bass vocal by John Jefferson, with Jo Jo Wallace soaring on high tenor vocal and lead guitar, in an arrangement reflecting the influence of group harmony giants The Ravens with bass vocalist Jimmy Ricks prominent in the arrangement.

How Jo Jo came to embrace the guitar is a whole other story in which, once again, a pump organ figures prominently. To Nations he recounted his introduction to the instrument that would define his professional life. His older sister Minnie was dating a young man known as Lightnin’, who worked at a downtown printing shop. Lightnin’ and Jo Jo’s brother Johnny became friends through work connections (Johnny did deliveries for Western Union), and after-hours Johnny would borrow Lightnin’’s guitar and teach himself chords. “This was a huge hollow-body model which he’d ride home with,” Jo Jo recalled. “Johnny tried his best to make the chords he had heard mama play on the pump organ. After a struggle he came to a point where he could make just three chords. I’d sit between his legs on the floor looking at his left hand trying to figure out his moves. He would make the same chords every sitting. When it came time for him to go to work he placed the instrument in the corner of the house. He would shout, ‘You better not mess with that guitar!’

“I was scared but when he left the house and rode out of sight I’d run and pick up the guitar which was almost as large as I was. I tried to pick out the chords he had made as best I remembered them. Problem was I could hardly reach my arms around the instrument to hold it but I was determined Somehow I managed to remember all I had learned listening to mama play the old hymns and could transcribe the chords to the guitar. Mama heard me play and was taken by surprise. She had my brother John Junior sit and listen. I knew that if the order came from her, I wouldn’t be punished for using the instrument. Johnny was at first surprised and then jealous of my skill. He never borrowed Lightnin’’s guitar after that.

“So when Minnie went out on a date, she asked to borrow Lightnin’’s guitar on my behalf. I practiced whenever I could after that; I even took it to bed with me.”

‘Morning Train,’ The Sensational Nightingales, with Julius Cheeks, songwriter and lead vocalist

In 1934 Jo Jo’s mother hopped a bus to Philadelphia to visit her aunt there; during her stay she met and fell in love with a Mr. Burns and decided to take up residence permanently in the City of Brotherly Love, where the couple later married. Jo Jo and John Junior stayed behind in North Carolina to finish high school and joined their mother a year after graduating. Let loose in the big city, Jo Jo, by his own admission, ran wild, telling Nations, “I got myself into a lot of trouble. I made many bad mistakes.” When his mother “got riled up to the point where she got real tough with me,” Jo Jo realized the pain he was causing the family and took a nine-to-five job hand spraying finish on strip lights for the Gill Fixture Company, becoming a lifeline for a family always in dire financial straits. According to Jo Jo’s niece, Annie Gilbert, it was the only nine-to-five job Jo Jo ever held.

‘The Lord Will Make a Way,’ The Sensational Nightingales, with Julius Cheeks on lead vocal and John Jefferson, bass (1957)

Philadelphia was a hotbed of gospel music during those years, especially when it came to female quartets—the Davis Sisters, the Angelic Gospel Singers, and the Clara and Gertrude Ward Singers, foremost among others now lost to history—along with male groups such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, whose legendary lead singer Ira Tucker also taught gospel vocal lessons to the locals. Pioneering gospel composer Charles Albert Tindley (his song “I’ll Overcome Someday” was the basis for the Civil Rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome”) not only penned standards of the genre but opened his Tindley Temple to performances by local amateur and professional gospel performers. The city was home to two important early gospel labels, Grand and Gotham, although the former was not solely focused on recording gospel. In the late ‘30s Jo Jo and John Junior (the latter freshly out of the military), inspired by the Golden Gate Quartet’s radio broadcasts, landed positions in a local church group, the Heavenly Gospel Singers. It was a tenure short-lived, as the brothers soon bolted to the Silveraires quartet out of Wilmington, NC. The Wallace brothers both sang tenor, with Jo Jo, now an experienced instrumentalist, doubled on guitar. In January 1949 Gotham signed the Silveraires and six months later made a major signing in bringing the Dixie Hummingbirds into the fold. Between January 1949 and October 1950 the Silveraires recorded seven singles for Gotham. Nations appraises the group’s output thusly: “The most impressive includes the beautifully balanced harmonies of W.B. Stevens’ ‘Farther Along’ done in the jubilee style, Edna Gallmon Cooke’s soulful ‘In My Heavenly Home,’ and the Golden Gates-like flavoring of ‘End of My Journey.’ The group’s touching hymn-powered reading of “Shine On Me’ is equally well perfected as any version I have ever heard.”

‘Farther Along,’ The Silveraires, featuring lead singer Haizo Miles, tenors Jo Jo and John Wallace Jr., released by Philadelphia’s Gotham Records (1949)

‘So High,’ The Silveraires, featuring lead singer Haiti Miles, bass singer John McLaurin, tenors Jo Joann John Wallace r., released by Philadelphia’s Gotham Records

As musical trends changed in post-War America, gospel transitioned from the Silveraires’ jubilee style to a harder, more driving “saved-and-sanctified” sound advanced by dynamic lead singers such as Julius Cheeks, for one, and the Blind Boys of Mississippi’s Archie Brownlee. Finding its sweet approach falling out of favor, and unable to adapt to the new trend, the Silveraires disbanded in 1950; for nearly two years thereafter Jo Jo sat in wherever there was need for his services as either a guitarist or a vocalist, or both, until Barney Parks came calling in 1952 when he was in the process of shaking up the Nightingales’ membership.

‘Standing at the Judgment,’ written by Julius Cheeks, lead singer, with the Sensational Nightingales, JoJo Wallace on guitar

After joining the Nightingales, Jo Jo settled in for the remainder of his career, becoming the group’s longest-tenured member at his retirement in 2021 at age 94. In addition to Jo Jo, the classic lineup in gospel’s golden era in the early to mid-‘50s, recording for Decca before moving to Don Robey’s Houston-based Peacock label, included Cheeks (the musical descendants of Cheeks’s muscular, incendiary vocal style include Sam Cooke, James Brown, Ray Charles, the Jive Five’s Eugene Pitt, the Temptations’ David Ruffin, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and the Persuasions’ Jerry Lawson—A Hall of Fame lineup of R&B and soul titans), Ernest James, Bill Woodruff, and bass vocalist John Jefferson. This lineup’s increasing popularity inspired Parks to upgrade the collective identity to Sensational Nightingales in response to the intense audience reaction to their live shows and their potent Peacock recordings (and progressive they were too—Cheeks advocated for expanding the arrangements to include other instruments, such as pianos, and more complex vocal arrangements reflecting the influence of group harmony giants on the order of the Mills Brothers, the Ink Spots and the Ravens, to the point where some of their arrangements prefigure the rise of classic doo-wop in the mid-’50s). Cheeks, who left and rejoined the Sensational Nightingales several times during its heyday (even joining the Soul Stirrers briefly, where he claimed he counseled Sam Cooke to adopt a harder, more emotional approach to his vocals, leading to Sam becoming gospel’s first matinee idol before going secular and signing with RCA), moved on for good in 1960, leading several experienced gospel frontmen to audition as the new Nightingales lead vocalist before Cheeks’s favorite, Charles Johnson, became the chosen one. Johnson was with the group until 1984, when he was replaced by Calvert McNair.

‘View That Holy City,’ The Sensational Nightingales (1957)

During the Nightingales’ prime, Jo Jo and Cheeks developed great camaraderie and communication that paid off both in the studio and in live performances. “As time went by, June Cheeks and I became pretty close,” Jo Jo told Nations. “We were a great team. I don’t know how I came to get one but I managed to pick up a fifty foot extension cord to run from my guitar to the amp. Our mike setup was such that three singers stood around a mike at center stage while June and I stood off to the left and right sides. During our act, as the trio kept tight harmony. June Cheeks would creep down the left aisle screaming and preaching and carrying on while I danced (I had all Chuck Berry’s moves down before he ever used them) down the right aisle playing my guitar. Church folk called me ‘The Gospel Chuck Berry’ and as chance would have it, I even looked a lot like him, especially when I had my hair teased up in a pompadour. We created a lot of excitement with this act.” 

‘Morning Train,’ The Sensational Nightingales, with Julius Cheeks, songwriter and lead vocalist

As for “The Twist,” Wallace said he was inspired by seeing his sister “Minnie” Margaret doing some unusual dance moves while singing the Trixie Smith tune “Messin’ Around,” released on Paramount in 1926. “I used to go to the door, and my sister be out there just twisting her tail,” Wallace said. “I said, ‘Momma, look at sis up there doing the twist,’ and that’s where it comes from.” It was in 1957 when Jo Jo began fooling around on guitar with a melody and an opening lyric he had written—“C’mon baby, let’s do the twist.” Fellow Nightingale Bill Woodruff added some new lyrics, and a casual get-together produced a finished song. Knowing “The Twist” was not appropriate for the Nightingales, Jo Jo offered the song to Little Joe Cook of Philadelphia’s Little Joe Cook & The Thrillers but Cook passed on it. At that point, a new Nightingale, David Eddington, took the song to King Records’ founder Syd Nathan, who in turn brought it to Hank Ballard’s attention. Ballard and his guitarist/arranger Cal Green retained Jo Jo’s opening lyric,, built on it and then crafted their own arrangement. Ballard recorded his version with the Midnighters in 1958, then re-recorded it in January 1959 as the B side of the group harmony ballad, “Teardrops on Your Letter.” The single became Ballard’s fourth million seller. Jo Jo admitted to having never signed a songwriting agreement with King, and beyond that had no desire to claim the song since gospel music, not R&B, was his life.

‘In My Mind,’ The Sensational Nightingales, with Julius Cheeks (Lead vocal), John Jefferson (bass) and Jo Jo Wallace (high tenor) (1956)

Still another twist on “The Twist” came from Midnighters member Lawson Smith, who claimed Nathaniel Bills, of The Gospel Consolaters, wrote the song. He said Bills asked The Spaniels to record it, but then Ballard “stole” the song, falsely claiming authorship. No evidence has ever surfaced to confirm Bills’s claim.

After a long run with Peacock and ABC-Peacock, the Sensational Nightingales signed with Mississippi’s Malaco Music Group in 1980. During this time, the group counted Jo Jo, Charles Johnson, Horace Thompson, and Darrell and Ricky Luster among its members while touring the world and becoming the first gospel quartet inducted into the American Gospel Quartet Hall of Fame. The group received Grammy nominations in 2004 and 2019, and in 2018 was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame

A Special Tribute to Jo Jo Wallace of the Sensational Nightingales, 1926-2025. Music: ‘Face to Face,’ The Sensational Nightingales with vocal by Calvert McNair, who succeeded Charles Johnson as lead vocalist in 1984. Posted at YouTube by Devyn Antwan.

In 1951 Jo Jo married Inez Evelyn Jones. They were married for 55 years, until she predeceased him in 2006. Jo Jo credited Inez with helping him accept Christ and commit to living out the gospel beyond the stage.

Though he retired from full-time touring in 2021 at age 94, Jo Jo continued to make guest appearances at gospel events and remained active in his local community. He spent his final years in Durham, North Carolina. On May 7, 2025, his work here done, his life’s crown won, his troubles and trials over, Jo Jo’s spirit made its way to the loved ones who’ve gone on before, in the land where we’ll never grow old.