PRE-ORDER IT NOW
Release date: 15th August 26
 (click here) 

Jonah Ellis came to the Drifters as a guitarist but was soon singing with the group and acting as their musical director. 

This multitalented musician/ songwriter hailed from DC where he was born on 25 August 1947 and grew up to graduate from Springarn, Senior High in Washington. 

He went on to study further at Morris Town Junior College in Morris Town, Tennessee. Then he received a BA degree in Music from Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee, and a Master of Arts in Music from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.

His first move into recording came with his group Jonah and the Whales and ‘Savannah Sun’ which sold well locally by didn’t chart nationally. J

onah’s second single ‘I Get Hot/ Popcorn Cellar’ on Viking Records in 1970 had similar results but he was writing great songs and creating a lot of interest. 

In addition to penning Yarbrough and Peoples big hit ‘Don’t Stop The Music’ in 1980 which hit platinum. 

Jonah was writer/ producer at Total Experience Records where he found time to cut a single under his own name ‘Christmas Won’t Be Christmas Without My Baby’ and also wrote hits for the Gap Band the biggest hit being ‘Desire’. Jonah only stayed a Drifter for about a year between 1986-87. 

A short time later he joined the Temptations as their lead guitarist but didn’t stop writing songs for other artists 

(sometimes in his pen name Lonnie Simmons) like Alicia Keys ‘Gangsta Lovin’, Puff Daddy ‘Soul Food’, Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King ‘Shame’, Billy Paul ‘Fire In Her Love’

and so many more including Aretha and sister Carolyn Franklin, Esther Phillips, Rose Royce and Burt Bacharach. 

Jonah continued to write and perform internationally until his untimely death from a stroke on 22 February 2010.