After a near-death experience with a flesh-eating bacteria, he’s back! “There’s something new going on!” he exclaimed.
There’s probably not a church choir on the planet that didn’t sing the song, “Jesus Is Real.” The 1991 release (from the “Wash Me” album) became a megahit for choirmaster, John P. Kee and New Life Com-munity Choir. Kee was dubbed “The Prince of Gospel Music,” partly because his middle name is actually “Prince,” but also as a nod to his prowess as a performer and songwriter who was promoted and support-ed by Gospel Music Workshop of America founder, Rev. James Cleveland, a.k.a. “The King of Gospel Music.”
The multi-gifted Kee formed New Life Community Choir in the mid 1980s. Ten years later, he launched the Vic-tory in Praise Music and Arts Seminar (VIP), and in 1995, he opened his church, New Life Fellowship Center. In June 2024, Kee celebrated a mile-stone birthday. It was his 60th, but despite all the notoriety he’s earned for being one of gospel music’s most celebrated and successful stand-ard-bearers, he almost didn’t live to see it.
The downward spiral began in Jan-uary (2024). “My mother passed the first week of January,” he explained, “and I went [to Durham] to make arrangements for her funeral. I got sick. I thought I had food poisoning. I was self-diagnosing. I considered that I might have the flu. I made the arrangements, paid for everything and came back to Charlotte.”
Kee was preparing to return to Dur-ham to oversee his mom’s home-going, but he never made it. He was at his church in Charlotte and collapsed. “My legs stopped work-ing,” he described. “I was on the floor at the church. I called my sons, but I still thought it was just food poisoning or the flu. When I got to the hospital that night, they told me my condition was serious. Then, they transferred me to the main hospital downtown and immediately took me into surgery. I had contracted a dis-ease called Necrotizing fasciitis. It’s a flesh-eating bacteria that was eating away at my body.”
Kee says that the infection was centered in his right inner thigh. His condition was so severe it caused him to undergo five surgeries and remain in a semi-conscious state for several weeks. “They didn’t know if I’d wake up or not,” he shared. “I was on a breathing machine. I had over nine IVs. It was bad. My kids came in, they were crying.”
Kee says he was in a non-responsive state for three days, and his long time manager, Jeanette Taylor came up with an idea. “You’re gonna love this,” he laughs, “Jeanette said, ‘You know what? He hates to listen to his own music!’”
With that, she went to an online ‘John P. Kee’ station and began play-ing old VIP songs. He muses, “They say I threw my hands in the air and slammed them on the bed! My wife was in the room. She said, ‘You don’t want to hear that?’ And that’s how they brought me back, playing my music that I didn’t want to hear!”
Although Kee was conscious, he wasn’t yet out of the woods. “I stayed in the hospital, in the ICU, for weeks. After that, I got a room for about four or five days, and then they sent me to rehab. It was rough, but I handled it like the gangster I am. I went in there and if they asked for 10, I gave them 12. If they asked for 30, I gave them 40. And I tell everybody, I think I did too good because they let me out before I was able to walk again. So, I pretty much handled the walking with my sons. They aided me. But I just wouldn’t stop. It was a process. I had to learn how to do everything again.”
Kee says his physical rehabilitation was difficult, but he affirms that his mental state was intact from the moment he gained consciousness. “When I came to and knew who I was,” he recalls, “I immediately started remembering scripture. I don’t think my speech was bothered, and I was okay, vocally. But I had a dream (while I was in the hospital), that I was on a chicken farm and the rancher came down and we were all standing in a field. And he said, ‘If you don’t cough when I ring this bell, you’ll never sing again!’ So, one day in rehab, I shared the dream with everybody. I was laughing, but I noticed that they weren’t laughing. Because what really happened was that the surgeons came down and they said, ‘We need him to cough,’ and when they removed the tube, I coughed.”
“I’ve written it in the countless songs, and I know everybody says it, but I was literally given another chance.
I can’t tell you I wasn’t listening to God. I can’t tell you I wasn’t obeying Him, but there’s a newness about my hands. My hands are different. There’s just something new going on. And as corny as that sounds, the small things are making me appreciate the big things. Like being able to speak, to walk, to read, to comprehend, to sing, to play, to write. I hear God literally saying, ‘This was not an accident! This was done on purpose.”