And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
—Joel 2:28–29
Being the baby boy is not very easy. Having six older brothers who think that they’re really your dad and that they can tell you what to do, whenever they want? That gets old, quick. But I don’t have to go down that road; if you have older siblings, you know exactly where I’m coming from.
Even with all the not-so-fun stuff that accompanies being the baby boy, I still looked up to my older brothers. I remember like it was yesterday.
It was 1981, and our little house was buzzing with the commotion that comes with getting all dressed up to see your family members sing. But this time it wasn’t church. My brothers Marvin, Ronald, Carvin, and Michael were giving a concert at Mercy College. And so, it was a kind of church, because they were giving a Gospel music concert. It was church, in a theater. Or so we thought.
My father always told us that before you can become an international star, you have to be a national star. And before you can become a national star, you have to be a regional star. And before you can become a regional star, you have to be a local star. There are levels of success that teach and prepare you for the next level.
My brothers had become local and regional stars. That night was their night.
So when it was time to leave, we heard the cattle call. Either Mom or Dad shouted every name of every individual who was living in the house.
“Come on down, it’s time to go! We can’t be late!”
My mother was the Queen of Worry. She always wanted to be on time.
Not only did we have to be on time, it was mandatory that we looked good for the concert. That meant, for me, a tie—my Sunday best. My father used to tell us, “Boys, when you’re representing God, you have to look that part. The best for the Best.”
Those were the early days. Close to home. Singing to friends, family, church members, people in the community. And this was the family ritual. Put on your Sunday best and don’t be late and support your family. Eventually, time and faithfulness will produce something great. That’s what Dad and Mom impressed upon us.
In time, my brothers found success on the national level. They performed at the historical Fox Theatre, near downtown Detroit. This wasn’t the church stage, which of course we all loved and adored. Nor was it the local college stage. This was the stage where Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Gladys Knight and the Pips, Liza Minnelli, and Stevie Wonder performed. This was the national stage.
And the theater itself? What can be said that hasn’t been already? It was one of the five Fox theaters in the US in 1928. It had seen better days—it was a shell of itself in the eighties—and wasn’t restored until a few years later. But still. My brothers were performing at the Fox Theatre. And we were all giddy with excitement.
Finally, we arrive at the concert. Right on time, maybe a little early (thank you, Momma!). And the place was electric. The old historic theater felt massive to me and full of wonder. And then the lights came up, and I saw the four of them standing on the stage, dressed crisply in matching suits. When they began to sing, it was like I had never heard them before. The Winans, my brothers, sang a smooth, more R&B-ish, more entertaining to the ears, more contemporary Gospel music than the traditional quartet Gospel sound popular at the time. The words were straight Gospel, but the music, the arrangement, the feel and sound—it sounded like smooth pop. I suppose that’s why the crowd reacted the way they did.
Seeing my brothers on the stage stirred something inside me. I wanted to be up there. I wanted to hear the applause and the screams. I wanted to sing beneath the lights. I shouted, “This is incredible!” I was caught in the moment.
My brothers were up there onstage, and the whole audience was treating them like they were the Four Tops. This was weird to me because I was used to hearing the audience in the form of the congregation at our church go crazy with the Holy Spirit and sing and shout praises to God. But these people were screaming out for Jesus and my brothers. I remember one woman even threw her panties at them! We shouted out, “Oh, Jesus.” Not as a praise but as an “Oh, help them, Jesus!” Lord of heaven, I prayed that my momma didn’t see that. Momma didn’t miss one thing; she surely didn’t miss that.
We were so proud of my brothers. They had succeeded in a way we never thought possible. It’s funny now, because my father used to say that that style of music was the Devil’s style of music. We used to laugh at Dad, because he always said that singers who sang Gospel music for a general audience “may be singing about Jesus, but they’re one step away from the Devil.”
Standing there in the moment left a mark on me—and that mark has never faded. My brothers sang one of their more popular songs, “The Question Is.” One section of the lyrics goes:
Question is, will I ever leave you?
And the answer is, No, no, no, no…
Now the question is, will I do His will?
And the answer is, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That song talks about deciding to follow Jesus, right then; deciding to serve Him, to stay faithful to Him. A great song. But sometimes lyrics catch you, and their meaning can bend in toward your own life situation, your own passions and thoughts. And for the briefest of moments, I felt the urgency of my desire to sing and to be known, just like my brothers. The moment might have been brief, but I remember that feeling vividly. It left a mark.
You can imagine, back at the house, after the concert, the celebration that ensued. We talked about how God had kept His promises. My father used to remind us about certain scriptures, about passages that enlightened us about success. One in particular says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much” (Luke 16:10). And my brothers were faithful—at church, at choir rehearsals, and at revival services. They sang the same way they sang at the Fox Theatre. They sang with the same passion in our church choir as they did in front of thousands of people. It was a blessed thing to talk about how God was faithful to His Word.
Now with my brothers’ success with their album Introducing the Winans, touring was the next step. When that moment came, I was given the incredible opportunity to take over the choir at church. Not what I was looking for. But I was faithful. I carried on as my brothers traveled with my dad, who managed them during the early part of their career. At this point, they were national. And I was local.
Seeing my brothers find such success, I couldn’t help but wonder, “When is it going to be my time?”
But as always, Momma was there to reassure me that God had a master plan. All He needed to bring His plan to fruition was patience—my patience. Oh, the virtue of patience. Such an ugly word when you’re young. I was barely eighteen. And I was in a hurry for stardom.
* * *
Life isn’t all glittery all the time, with dreams coming true. This truth we learned at a very early age, and we learned it at the hands and the example of our parents. Life is about hard work, whether that’s working on your craft as a singer or musician, like everyone was in our family, or working a job at a grocery story. They taught us to do it with all our hearts, as worship to God. God has a plan, and so often it’s hard to see, or it feels as though you might be just drifting.
But God wants us to move. He wants us to put our hands to the work in front of us, to be faithful in the small things first. And I needed to be faithful in small things, even when my brothers were up onstage living their dream. I’m thankful for those lessons now, but at the time that was a hard pill to swallow.
Even with all the good lessons Dad was giving me, I didn’t completely understand the choices that he and Mom made. I loved my family, and I knew that Mom and Dad had sacrificed for it; I still felt as though my parents had put their dreams aside for work. I kept dreaming that somehow my work and my passion could be the same thing. I wanted to sing more than I wanted to work, but some people managed to do both. I wanted to be one of those people, and I prayed that God would give me that opportunity.
And work did eventually come our way, but it wasn’t the kind of work that I thought it would be. I was still learning. God saw to that. God, and our brothers Ronald and Marvin.
Ronald really believed that CeCe and I were special. He wanted to see CeCe and me use our talents, and he scouted out different opportunities for us. Even when we were in elementary school, Ronald made us form a group: CeCe, my brothers Daniel and Michael—before Michael was promoted and became one of the Winans—and I were the Winans Part Two.
One such opportunity Ronald found for us was the Mumford High School talent show. Mumford High was famous for their talent shows. Very talented students performed each year. Ronald’s idea for our “group” was that we’d walk over from MacDowell Elementary School and perform at the Mumford High School talent show.
Boy, was I scared. But Ronald was convinced that we were prepared.
“What song should we sing?” I asked.
“‘Tell Them,’ by Andraé Crouch and the Disciples,” replied Ronald.
But we couldn’t just stand there and sing the songs; Ronald was having none of that. He had us moving like Gladys Knight and the Pips. CeCe was Gladys, and Michael, Daniel, and I were the Pips—the Christian version, that is!
What a proud moment that was for him and for us. The auditorium erupted in praise and applause for his invention.
Understand that singing a Gospel song at the talent show was courageous. But we did it, knowing that the audience was famous for throwing the acts they didn’t enjoy off the stage. And those acts were singing secular, mainstream songs, not Gospel.
It was totally different than us singing in church. And that was OK. Though at the time it seemed like a major transgression. That was our first taste of “crossing over,” I suppose. It felt good, and we had fun.
When the opportunity came for CeCe and me to travel to North Carolina and try out for The PTL Singers on Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s The PTL Club, we were gung ho and ready.
PTL stood for “Praise the Lord,” and Howard McCrary was the musical director for the television show. He’d gotten news of a few potential openings at PTL in Charlotte, North Carolina. Howard thought the opportunity would be great for CeCe and me to audition. None of us really understood the spotlight PTL would put us in. But I was ready to go for it.
My brothers told Howard that Dad would never let CeCe go all the way down to Charlotte. And they had every reason to be right. Dad didn’t even let us boys go across the street and spend the night at our friends’ houses—and we were boys! Daddy felt we were safe when we were in his house, because he could protect us. CeCe was the first—and spoiled—girl, the apple of Daddy’s eye. So there was no way, we thought, that he would let her go all the way down south to audition for the show.
And what if she made the cut? Would she move down there? No way.
But Mom thought the opportunity was worth the experience. So Mom agreed to make the trip with CeCe and me. We took a Greyhound bus clear down to Charlotte. I’m old enough to know now that the Greyhound bus ride was not a 950-day journey. But it felt like it at the time. I don’t care how old you are, a nineteen-hour bus ride can make you go half insane. All the stops. The people coming and going. The gas fill-ups. The awful food. I can paint a rosy picture now and say it was quite the adventure, but I’d be lying. It was a brutal bus ride, even though buses in the South had been desegregated for years by the time we made this trip in 1981.
But we didn’t go insane. The excitement of the circumstances kept my mind churning the whole way down to Charlotte. The anticipation of what was to come was greater than the long journey to the faraway destination. When I stepped off that bus in Charlotte, I prayed for strength.
I do remember Momma saying, “I will never do this again.”
I can say this now, as a father of two children, because I get it. What a sacrifice for me and CeCe. She left eight children behind for Daddy to care for, while she endured two starry-eyed teenagers on what felt like a one-thousand-day journey to Charlotte.
* * *
We all love our comfort zones. And my family and Detroit were my comfort zones. CeCe’s too. Breaking away from your foundation, your rock of familiarity—that takes some doing. And it was no different for CeCe and me.