During their debut at the Sweet Chariot – a nightclub in Manhattan, allegedly run by the Mafia, that presented African American gospel music to largely...
Dorothy Morrison, whose spirit-filled contralto lead vocals sparked the 1969 hit “Oh Happy Day” by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, sat in a semicircle last Thursday rehearsing...
Brenda Vaughn didn’t know quite what to expect when in the late ‘80s her friend, the late Oakland soul singer Jacquii Marshall, recommended her for a...
Vicki Randle snarled over her throbbing electric bass lines and the bashing beats of the other three Skip the Needle women band members during an original...
By Lee Hildebrand “I’ve always been pretty determined,” San Francisco-born singer and songwriter Perri Arnette McKissick, known professionally as “Pebbles,” told England’s Blues & Soul magazine...
Even before her rise to national fame began 11 years ago, Oakland soul singer Ledisi had formed a mutual admiration society of sorts with some of...
The late vocalist Sista Monica Parker was blessed with an uncanny power to move people. She could bring audiences to tears, whether belting the blues on...
While singing Negro spirituals in elementary school in her native Charlotte, North Carolina, Jacqueline Hairston thought of those haunting melodies as play songs. In high...
Veteran Bay Area vocalist Faye Carol doesn’t like being tagged a “jazz singer” or “blues singer,” although she sings both. “Music is in the ear of...
As a teenager growing up in Berkeley during the 1960s, Tramaine Hawkins, the daughter of Ronald and Lois “the Pie Queen” Davis, was well aware of...
Whether wailing with her multi-octave pipes and rhythmically pumping piano in nightclubs and at blues festivals, or every Sunday morning at Oakland’s Taylor Memorial United Methodist...
Ever since she answered a newspaper classified ad in 1967 that read, “Wanted: One Soul Singer” – which happened to be the title of her favorite...
Deciding on which of some 50 women to begin Women’s History Month in a projected yearlong series, “Bay Area African American Women in Music,” presented a...
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