He studied voice with African-American concert artist Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield and toured with her troupe for a few years before embarking on his own successful solo career.

His father, John C. Bowers Sr. (1773–1844), was a secondhand clothing dealer, a vestryman and school trustee at St. Thomas African Episcopal Church, and one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.

[5] But as more people became acquainted with his singing, he was persuaded to appear at a Philadelphia recital in 1854 with African American concert artist Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, and became her student in voice.

[5] He proceeded to tour with Greenfield's troupe in Philadelphia, the Midwestern United States, New York, and Canada,[7] and afterwards embarked on a successful solo career.

[11] Together with other members of his family, Bowers was a national organiser of "black opposition to the fugitive slave laws of the 1850s and a state representative of the Equal Rights Convention.

[12] At the time of his death in 1885, he possessed "nearly $10,000 in real estate, Pennsylvania Railroad stock, household furnishings and cash in the Farmers and Mechanics Bank".