"We had a quota to pick depending on our age. When I was 7, I was required to pick 70 pounds of cotton every day. However, once I had collected about 40 pounds, I discovered that this was enough cotton to make me a comfortable bed”, said Campbell. “So, I would lie in my bed of cotton and daydream about moving away from the cotton fields and being successful.  I sure would get into a lot of trouble at the end of the day, but that never stopped me from pursuing my dreams”. It was hard not to dream of success, especially having for a role model and older brother a man the rest of the world knows as “Little” Milton Campbell, the legendary bluesman.

It was in those early years that John knew he was going to be a barber.  When John and his nine siblings would go to the barbershop, he noted that the barber was different from his father and the sharecroppers of Inverness. The barber, Mr. Pete Adams, wore a white starched shirt, a bowtie, creased pants and shoes that were always shined – “Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes on a weekday!”  Something else about those pants the barber wore John asked his father about:  “Why do his thighs bulge?”  John’s father explained that it was money in the barber’s pocket. From that day on, John set his sites on being a barber to escape the cotton-picking days.   

John began cutting hair at the age of four, and upon reaching his seventh birthday, asked his father for a pair of clippers. With six of the ten Campbell children still at home, he was able to save his family a good deal of money by cutting hair. When his siblings’ hair didn’t grow fast enough to suit him, he would cut the dog’s hair or the cat’s hair. John remembers a family friend scolding, “James, you ought to be ashamed; letting little John cut the dog’s hair”.  

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