Hallucination Verification John Wyker and The
Mighty Field of Vision
by Mitch Lopate Back in 2000 I was publishing a magazine
called GRITZ, and one of our staff writers Mitch “The Jersey Devil” Lopate turned in a great interview with an Alabama musician named Johnny Wyker. It was all a part of Mitch’s vision quest he had recently under- taken, driving to Mississippi to meet Bobby Whitlock and to Alabama to meet Wyker, Pete Carr and other assorted Muscle Shoals related musicians. It was Mitch who first introduced me to the
late Ray Brand and his band The Crawlers, whom I ended up recording two albums with. Mitch also introduced me to Wyker, who be- came a fast friend. Wyker was one of a kind. After his recent passing, I wanted to pay trib- ute to him, and I could think of no better way that to republish Mitch’s original 2000 arti- cle. Hard to believe it’s been nearly 14 years since it ran. But here it is, just as it appeared then. - Buffalo
¶ Hallucination verification, John D. "Wild-
Cat" Wyker's back on the loose! Actually, it's hard to keep him tied down - he's a writin', talkin', music-loving-and-playing power sta- tion of ideas. A musician by trade and a show- boat promotion man by heart with close ties to Muscle Shoals, John's been riding the cir- cuit for decades through several incarnations.
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Some of you may remember him on an early clip of American Bandstand (you remember that show from the '60's, dontcha?), the sin- gles, "Motorcycle Mama" and "Baby Ruth" (the latter recorded as a duet by Delbert Mc- Clinton and Bonnie Bramlett), and leadership of the Rubber Band and Sailcat. The Rubber Band was a favorite of two
other fledging artists who had just come to town with their band, the Allman Joys - and we're talking here about a very young Duane and Gregg Allman. John and Duane were closely entwined in many episodes of mischief and rascally ways, and one of John's Strato- casters wound up in Duane's possession (cur- rently in Delaney Bramlett's hands). To boot, John also was there for the jump-starts of two other familiar faces: a young Rhodes Scholar and ex-Ranger with a guitar named Kris Kristofferson, and a piano-playing wonder called Chuck Leavell. In those days, if you looked under most any roof that supported four walls south of the Mason-Dixon line and had a band performing inside, you'd find John Wyker and friends. Not one to ignore the call of Fate, John's at
the reins of two large-scale tasks: the curator and gatekeeper of the legacy of Eddie Hinton, an R&B soulmeister who cut "Shout Ba- malama," "300 Pounds," and other churning tunes through a meteoric-like brief lifetime of brilliance and flame-out. And if that's not enough weight to shoulder, John is the fa- ther-figure and mentor to The Mighty Field of Vision Anthem, a project with the heart and spirit of inspiration of efforts (like Charlie
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