Photo courtesy Plateau Music

Bobby Brooks Wilson returns to Sun City to perform at Sundial Center 7 p.m. Wed. March 15.

He is the son of legendary soul and R&B artist Jackie Wilson, who performed music from the Soul Era of the 1950s and 1960s.

Brooks Wilson never met his father, as he wound up living in a foster home when he was a child. However, a series of events led Brooks Wilson to discover he is indeed the son of Jackie Wilson.

Nowadays, Brooks Wilson makes sure each time out on the stage is memorable for people.

"I go and try to make people happy, take them down memory lane," he said. "Have them forget the troubles and hope the music is a form of healing for them."

He recalled singing aboard a ship while on a cruise through the Panama Canal in late February when a woman came up to him and started crying. Her husband had died two years ago.

"She felt like he was sitting next to her," Mr. Brooks Wilson recalled her saying.

Listening was one of the reasons Mr. Brooks Wilson took up singing. As an electrical engineer in the Navy, back in the 1980s, Mr. Brooks Wilson was singing in his work station when his CEO took notice of his voice.

"He said ‘Brooks, Brooks, Brooks, you’re in the wrong business,’" Brooks Wilson recalled the CEO saying. "‘You should be singing for a living.’"

After leaving the Navy in 1989, Brooks Wilson followed up on singing and crossed paths with Peter Hernandez and his band Peter and the Love Notes. Mr. Hernandez is the father of pop singer Bruno Mars.

Brooks Wilson grew up in a foster home in South Carolina. Most of the time he couldn’t move and play with the rest of the kids because of rickets and bronchitis. So instead he listened to music, from gospel to country.

Having gone from a foster home to a singer travelling the world, Mr. Brooks Wilson offers children still in the system hope for whatever they want to accomplish.

"If you find yourself in a foster home and want to know who your parents not to worry about that, but be blessed that you had the opportunity to build a life and have a life and love the people around you," he said. "And love the people that opened their doors to you because you’re special and you’re special in God’s eyes. That’s why you’re here. If doors open take advantage of it."