Johnny Ray Daniels - Whatever You Need (2022) Hi Res

Johnny Ray Daniels was born in 1946 in the Beaver Dam area Greenville, North Carolina, one of seven children. By age 20, Daniels and a group of local friends started up a rock n roll band called the Soul Twisters. One night, Daniels life changed forever. He was standing on stage at a white nightclub in the neighboring city of Wilson, looking out over the faces of the audience dancing and drinking. I saw them just like a picture, he recalls. In the blink of an eye, it was like I could hear the Lord saying, Youre in the wrong place. He played out the rest of his booking obligations with the Soul Twisters, and then quit the band. After leaving his gear and his guitar with his bandmates, Daniels started his music career over again, this time in the church. He married a woman named Dorothy Vines, who was also singing in church with her sisters under the name the Vines Sisters. Daniels began attending their church, and when they found out he could play guitar they encouraged him to play piano too, something Daniels had never done. He started on just two fingers. I said Lord, give me that gift and Ill play it for you. My fingers opened up and Ive been playing ever since. Daniels put the music to every song the Vines Sisters ever sang as the group built up a reputation as one of the most stirring gospel groups in Eastern North Carolina. Holding to a hard-driving old-school quartet style, they were soon dubbed the Glorifying Vines Sisters by a local radio DJ, for the way they sang and shouted for the Lord. Daniels drove the Glorifying Vines Sisters on long road trips around the national gospel circuit, often coming home to sleep for four hours before putting in a day of work and getting right back on the road again. After 54 years, he turned his business over to his son Anthony, who leads his own group The Dedicated Men of Zion and continues the musical legacy of the Daniels and Vines families.