It’s been said that the most soulful music is born from pain. Whether it’s heartbreak or hard knocks, nothing seems to beat a kick in the butt for bringing out the best in a vocalist. Singer Bryan Wilson knows this first hand. Though only 23, he’s already lived a lifetime of pain through a broken family and abuse in the music industry. Against this backdrop, it’s understandable that when he stood on stage at the age of 12 and belted out one of the most soulful renditions of “His Eye on the Sparrow” ever with the Mississippi Children’s Choir that the gospel world fell in love with him instantly. Wilson was not just singing a song. He was singing from experience because like the song says, “His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches over me.” Surely, God had been watching over him too.
The singer’s story begins in Danville, Illinois where he was born on November 3, 1981. His mother and her family sang in a family gospel group called the Davis Singers. Wilson was only about six when he first began singing with them. “My grandfather was the major influence in my life up to that time,” Wilson says of his early years. “He was the one who encouraged me to keep singing. He told me to keep on singing and to carry on the family tradition. My grandfather was the leader of the group. The first time I ever sang a solo was at my grandfather’s funeral. It was kind of ironic that it was he who started me singing, and that my solo happened to be at his funeral. ” Aside, from his family, Wilson grew up loving the sacred sounds of James Moore, Commissioned, and the Clark Sisters.
Music served as a positive outlet for Wilson. He didn’t officially meet his biological father until he was ten. “Before then, he came around every few months or so to speak to my mother, but no one ever said that’s your father,” Bryan recalls. His father was a user, drinker and womanizer so there was little time in schedule for mentoring his son. Bryan’s mother worked hard to keep her three sons together and kept them grounded in church life. Growing up in a tough neighborhood, he developed a tough skin and was surrounded by temptations but he held on to his faith and kept on singing just for fun.
“I used to sing to the grass,” Bryan laughs. “I’d be out in the yard playing and pretending that each blade of grass was a member of my audience.” His next door neighbor Mrs. Parker often over heard him singing and thought that he was good. She liked his singing so much that she held on to a tape of little Bryan singing LaShun Pace’s “I Know I’ve Been Changed” and “His Eye is on the Sparrow” at a church service. Her daughter who is married to the nephew of Malaco Records Executive Director, Jerry Mannery, brought Bryan’s name up when plans were in action for the Mississippi Children’s Choir album. Her mom sent Bryan’s tape down and everyone at Malaco loved it and agreed that Bryan should sing on the project. Recorded live at Callaway High School Auditorium in Jackson, MS, Wilson didn’t know what he was going to sing when he showed up for rehearsal. “When they flew me down there, they said just sing a song. And, `His Eye is on the Sparrow’ was one of the songs that my grandfather had taught me. I began to sing and when I was singing it, the pianist Jerry Smith was saying – do this, do that. I am a quick learner, so I just did it. I think that night, he began to structure the song the way he thought that it should go, and it was just like that.”
The response was immediate. As Bryan reached and grabbed notes that only a Mariah Carey could snatch, the audience was in hysterics watching this child sing like an adult. Bryan’s track became the song that received the most gospel radio airplay and essentially sold the Mississippi Children’s Choir album, “A New Creation.” The album reached #39 on Billboard’s gospel chart and has since sold over 70,000 units. Soon gospel announcers had nicknamed Bryan “Boy Sparrow” because of the beautiful high notes he sang and because the song that brought him fame and acclaim was “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” Bryan’s overnight success led Malaco Records to offer him his own recording deal. Among the heavy-hitter producers crafting Bryan’s debut were gospel legend Walter Hawkins and John P. Kee. Sticking with a dramatic hymn as the radio single, “Blessed Assurance,” took the cd “Bryan’s Songs” to #21 on Billboard’s gospel chart. Instead of capitalizing off the cd’s success, Malaco let the momentum for Bryan wane. In the meantime, he suffered through puberty and a voice change that depressed him.
“I can remember times when my voice was changing, I would go places to sing and they would want me to sing `His Eyes on the Sparrow,’ but I just could not hit the notes,” Bryan recalls. “A lot of the times crowds were very displeased because they wanted to hear the little boy with the high voice. I went through a period almost where I couldn’t sing, and it was depressing, because I felt like, now God, you blessed me with this voice and you blessed me to do all these things, but now I feel like He was just taking it away from me. Then, there came a time when I didn’t even want to sing. I was just real hurt, I felt like my career was just coming to an end; like the Michael Jackson story, with the voice change kind of thing. That’s the way I felt really. I began to think about Tevin Campbell, who people had always compared me to – I wondered if he went through the same thing… Eventually, I had my tonsils removed, and now my range is finally going back up and I am just so happy. My voice had changed naturally, and I had to train myself how to sing. Now that I have had my tonsils out, I am in a stage of re-training my voice; learning how to sing all over again.”
Bryan showcased his new vocal style on the 1999 cd “Growing Up” which featured his foray into more urban, youthful flavored contemporary gospel music. A good, solid album, Malaco Records did not promote the album aggressively as they needed to. The three year gap between releases necessitated a reintroduction to gospel radio that Bryan did not get. Unbothered, Bryan moved to Orangeburg, South Carolina to stay with his surrogate father and to attend Claflin University as a theology and music major. After graduating with a B.A. in theology, he spent a year working towards a master’s of divinity degree from Princeton University. Now, he’s back on the radio airwaves with the autobiographical “Still, My Father” (about how God caused him to forgive his absentee father) and a new arrangement of the hymn “Uncloudy Day” from the CD Uncloudy Day (Artemis Gospel). He’s currently writing songs for his next solo project.