Laws was born in Chicago, Illinois, the oldest of three brothers and two sisters. His father was a stevedore and his mother was a housewife. Both came to Chicago from Mempis. Lawes’ family was not particularly inclined towards music though his youngest brother played organ in church and his cousin Lucky Laws recorded a single in the 1960’s.
Laws mother purchased his first guitar for him when he was 16 years old. He began playing various types of music but always found himself drifting back to R&B. His favourite performers as a youth included Sam Cooke and James Brown. Johnny’s break as a young guitarist came when he was taken under the wings of two legendary mentors. He learned guitar from Jimmy Reed and Buster Benton. Both invited him over to their homes for practice. Laws quit school as a sophomore and obtained his first job as a professional musician in the mid 60’s, playing in a club with his bongo playing friend Robert Lee Daniels. The two played banquets and taverns and as the venues became better so did the music and Laws got more and more into the blues.
After his time with Daniels he formed his first full band consisting of sax, bass, rhythm guitar and drums in addition to Laws lead guitar. Whilst playing the blues he worked during the day making record players, then over the years as a clothing salesman on Maxwell Street. He has played and performed on the South Side of Chicago since the mid-1960s, remaining largely a local cult favorite for decades although he travelled to Natchez, Mississippi, Madison, Wisconsin and Louisiana to perform. His aching falsetto voice and vast repertoire gained much local acclaim. His style ranges from soul to postwar blues to, occasionally, country music. He was featured in a 1993 issue of Living Blues magazine.
Laws released his debut album, My Little Girl, for Wolf Records in 1995. The album contains a couple of blues standards, but most of the songs were written by Laws. His second album, Blues Burnin' in My Soul, was released on Electro-Fi Records in 1999, containing cover versions of Junior Wells's song "Little by Little"; "Steal Away", by Jimmy Hughes; "Honest I Do" and "Ain't That Lovin' You Baby", by Jimmy Reed; and "Sadie", written and originally recorded by Hound Dog Taylor.
The autumn 1999 issue of Juke Blues stated that "Johnny Laws has a smooth, silky voice, at times almost a whisper, then rising into a falsetto, and falling back again into gentle expressiveness... His appeal is in a delivery that seems so deceptively effortless." Blues & Rhythm magazine noted, "It's a real shame that Johnny Laws has been unjustly ignored in the past... Blues Burnin’ In My Soul is an enjoyable CD.”
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Laws’s voice aches with passion, but he’s also one of the most charming entertainers around: he’ll stroll out into the audience, repeating phrases and singing directly to various admirers, making his show feel more like an intimate conversation among friends than a performance. He prides himself on his versatility; any given set is likely to veer from hard Chicago blues to smooth soul ballads and all the way to country and western (Marty Robbins is one of Laws’s favorite singers). It’s with ballads, though, that Laws excels: with his voice modulating from a trembling whisper to a pleading falsetto and his bond grinding out gospel like changes behind him, Laws can take a song like McKinley Mitchell’s “End of the Rainbow” and elevate souls at 500 paces.
In addition to a regular weekend slot at the Cuddle Inn, Laws has been a frequent performer at the annual Chicago Blues Festival, including a set in 2000.
(Edited from Wikipedia, Chicago Reader & CD liner notes)