Johnny considers his deep love of music a gift from God, and both his parents Dorothy and the late John Allen Edwards Sr.   Music has always served as a backdrop to his life and some of his earliest memories are of the dance parties his parents hosted on Saturday nights in the family small three story tenement in Providence RI.  

As a child Johnny would fall asleep to the sounds of Louis Jordan, B.B. King, Lionel Hampton and Nat King Cole just to name a few. Music was always present in the Edwards home.   Around the age of 7 Johnny found himself attracted to the sounds of a Spanish band complete with Trumpets blaring from the neighbors apt.   The band noticed how Johnny loved to watch them rehearse and eventually ended up bringing the eager kid a Spanish Acoustic Guitar back from Puerto Rico. 

Later that same year Johnny's mom bought him his 1st electric guitar from a Sears Roebuck catalog little did she know that simple act would set the direction for the rest of his life.  Johnny took to the electric guitar immediately and became somewhat of a guitar prodigy around his neighborhood earning him a place among the older cooler kids. Johnny's musical destiny was sealed when at the age of 13 has saw Jimi Hendrix at the Rhode Island Auditorium. 

It was the late 60's and the world was experiencing a Psychedelic Revolution and Vietnam. Providence was a musical melting pot for the arts where cultures collided and musicians could thrive.   Johnny started to gig around the City at the age of 14 and would to sit in with local legend blues man T.C. Brown also known as Top Cat at the Met Cafe in Providence.  Johnny went on to play in several local bands eventually landed a professional gig with Ecstasy a Funk Disco band that played the Apollo Theatre in New York City. He would go on to join several Funk Soul Reviews to include Double Quality, The Body Snatchers (with Mac Odom from Roomful of Blues), toured on both the U.S and Canadian music scene.  

1991 Johnny played Lead guitar for Stormin' Norman and the Hurricanes playing Blues and in 1992 hooked up with drummer Keith Pike and Bassist Bob Tiodor and started his own Rhythm Blues band known as Electric Blue Flames The group scorched up the scene literally and figuratively. In 1994 the band was featured in several East Coast Blues publications for their performance at the Onset Bay Bluesfest Onset Ma. After Johnny's on-stage antics of lighting his guitar on fire, Boston Blues Society Art Simas described the performance as Monterrey Revisited by " A guitarist that rips the guts out of his instrument and lays out a song like a cadaver on a cold marble slab".

Johnny competed in and won 2nd prize in the Hendrix Foundation Guitar Competition in 1996. Having been compared to Hendrix all his life Johnny figured why not, and in 1998 went on to form The Jimi Hendrix Tribute show Wild Blue Angels Johnny appeared in Experience Hendrix magazine twice and once in Rolling Stone in 2002 for the show to benefit the survivors and families of the tragic Rhode Island Station night club fire.

Johnny still performs the Hendrix Tribute show for festivals and theatres all over the US as well as gigging with his current band Power Of Soul Throughout his career Edwards has performed and shared the stage and has opened for many great artists : Peaches  Herb, Ohio Players, Tavares, Roberta Flack, The Holmes Brothers, Mighty Sam McClain Johnny The Texas Twister Clyde Copeland Rick Derringer of the McCoy's and The Buddy Miles Express also Drummer /Vocalist for Hendrix Band of Gypsies.   

His most recent works include writing composing for live musical performances with New Works / World Traditions at Brown University RI. After a successful run of Dreamscapes from the Famished Road, his most recent work was Melting Into Glass an original movement opera based upon images from Jimi Hendrix' life and poetry.

Biography By: Nadine L. Williams

 

"Johnny's exceptional musicianship and generosity as a creative collaboration continues to inspire us all towards the development of our new work, Sacrifice of Marrow"

              - Michelle Bach-Coulibaly - Educator, Choreographer/Performer           

Brown University