Early 1960's Detroit Singer -- JOHN KENNEDY

[jsmith]

Any Detroit expert here who could tell me a little about a Detroit [[?) based singer who went by the name of John Kennedy.
[[its no good googling the name as all you get are 100's of bits about the US President of that name).
He seems to have had a 'hit' with a song titled "Stand By Me" [[a version of the Ben E King song perhaps).
Anyway, he was popular enough [[& the song was) to land a prestigious gig at Carr's Beach [[Annapolis, Maryland) in June 1961.
Artists who were booked to play Carr's Beach [[the booking agent for the event at that time -- & for many years -- was Rufus Mitchell who ran Ru-Jac Records & Ace Promotions in Baltimore) had to be top names [[Little Willie John, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Motown acts) or at the very least had to have a current big 'radio track' on Baltimore / DC black stations.

5978

[robb_k]

6029
I never heard of John "Stand by Me" Kennedy. And we got many [[if not most) of the local Detroit records in Chicago, and I drove to Detroit from Chicago one Saturday per month to look for records. He couldn't have been very big at all. I remember Billy Kennedy of Thelma Records, who also wrote songs for other Detroit label artists. I can't remember a Soul record by John Kennedy. I've looked through over a million '60s Soul 45s in my 50 years since 1960.