Vintage Singer from Lancaster
Bringing hits of the 50s, 60's and 70's to life with passion!
Vintage Singer from Lancaster
Bringing hits of the 50s, 60's and 70's to life with passion!
Meet the Artist
Melancholic Memories… in conversation with Johnny Wrathall
“That’s how life takes you sometimes,” John Wrathall muses.
A mechanic by trade, Johnny never set out to perform, record, or preserve a musical era - yet that is precisely what he now does, one song at a time.
Johnny’s journey into music began not on a stage, but at home, singing for pleasure at his family-run bed and breakfast. Then, almost by accident, a guest, upon hearing him remarked, “You sound just like Jim Reeves! I didn’t know you could sing!”
Despite Johnny’s insistence that he didn’t, he was offered a 30-minute slot that Friday night, which was met with a standing ovation. “They said, that is Jim Reeves,” he recalls. It was enough to plant a seed.
A chance conversation on an RAC call out introduced Johnny to Radio Merseyside producer Wally Scott who invited him to send in a CD “if you reckon you sound like Jim Reeves!”. Johnny did, and a booking at Pontins soon followed.
“I was hooked after that,” he recalls.
Johnny is drawn to the songs of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, songs defined by their live musicianship, melody and feeling rather than reliance on technology. Dean Martin, Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Matt Monro - “If it sounds good, it is good,” he says, simply.
Nowhere is the power of that music more evident than in Johnny’s performances for older audiences. Care homes have become a regular part of his musical life, and it is here that the meaning of his work feels most profound. He speaks of a 98-year-old woman who had not spoken for 18 months, suddenly singing along, trying to dance, her carers in tears. Of another woman, unable to leave her room, who asked to hear the song she married to — Moonlight and Roses. Johnny sang it acapella. “She said thank you… and that she could die now,” he says. “It broke us.”
These are not moments Johnny recounts lightly. For him, the songs are more than entertainment alone; they are time machines. A way back to a dance floor, a wedding, a first love. “People remember being somewhere, with someone,” he explains. “That’s what the songs give them.”