Ruth Lee Jones, 29 August 1924, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA, d. 14 December 1963, Detroit, Michigan, USA. Raised in Chicago, Dinah Washington first sang in church choirs for which she also played piano. She then worked in local clubs, where she was heard by Lionel Hampton, who promptly hired her. She was with Hampton from 1943-46, recording hits with ‘Evil Gal Blues’,
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25 March 1942, Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Aretha Franklin’s music is steeped in the traditions of the church. Her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, was a Baptist preacher who, once he had moved his family to Detroit, became famous throughout black America for his fiery sermons and magnetic public appearances. He knew the major gospel stars Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward, who in
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Eleanor(a) Harris, 7 April 1915, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, d. 17 July 1959, New York City, New York, USA. ‘Lady Day’ taught herself to sing during her early teens in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was brought up until moving to New York in 1929. Factual inaccuracies and elements of myth and exaggeration have clouded the picture of her formative years despite
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Eunice Kathleen Waymon, 21 February 1933, Tryon, North Carolina, USA, d. 21 April 2003, Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. An accomplished pianist as a child, Eunice Waymon made her public debut at the age of 10 in her native North Carolina. She later moved to Philadelphia and studied at New York’s Juilliard School Of Music but left in 1954 after struggling
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Ella Jane Fitzgerald, 25 April 1917, Newport News, Virginia, USA, d. 15 June 1996, Beverly Hills, California, USA. Following the disappearance of her father, Fitzgerald was taken to Yonkers, New York by her mother and her new man Joseph da Silva. At school she sang with a glee club and showed early promise, but preferred dancing to singing. Even so, chronic shyness militated
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Sam Cook, 22 January 1931, Clarksdale, Mississippi, USA, d. 11 December 1964, Los Angeles, California, USA. Reverend Charles Cook and his wife Annie May relocated his family to Chicago during the 30s. The devout young Sam Cook first performed publicly with his brother and two sisters in their Baptist quartet, the Soul Children. As a teenager he joined the Highway QCs, before
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Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien, 16 April 1939, Hampstead, London, England, d. 2 March 1999, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. A long-standing critical favourite but sadly neglected by the mass public from the early 70s until the end of the 80s, the career of the greatest white soul/pop singer the UK has ever produced was a turbulent one. Formerly referre
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9 September 1941, Dawson, Georgia, USA, d. 10 December 1967, Lake Monona, Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The son of a Baptist minister with the same name, Redding assimilated gospel music during his childhood and soon became interested in jump blues and R&B. After resettling in Macon, he became infatuated with local luminary Little Richard and began singing on a full-time basi
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11 December 1926, Montgomery, Alabama, USA, d. 25 July 1984, Los Angeles, California, USA. Willie Mae Thornton was the daughter of a minister and learned drums and harmonica as a child. By the early 40s she was singing and dancing in Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Revue throughout the southern states. Basing herself in Texas, she made her first records as Big Mama Thornton fo
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18 March 1941, Prattville, Alabama, USA, d. 19 January 2006, Reston, Virginia, USA. The ‘wicked Pickett’ was one of the great southern soul singers to emerge during the 60s. Pickett moved to Detroit, Michigan in his early teens. He joined gospel group the Violinaires and embarked on church tours throughout North America. In his late teens he graduated to secular mu
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Sarah Lois Vaughan, 27 March 1924, Newark, New Jersey, USA, d. 3 April 1990, Los Angeles, California, USA. Although she was not born into an especially musical home environment (her father was a carpenter and her mother worked in a laundry), the young Sarah Vaughan had plenty of contact with music-making. As well as taking piano lessons for nearly 10 years, she sang in her c
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Irma Lee, 18 February 1941, Ponchatoula, Louisiana, USA. The ‘Soul Queen Of New Orleans’ was discovered in 1958 by band leader Tommy Ridgley. Her early records were popular locally, but an R&B hit came in 1960 with ‘(You Can Have My Husband But Please) Don’t Mess With My Man’. The following year Thomas rejoined producer/writer Allen Toussaint, wi
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Izear Luster Turner Jnr., 5 November 1931, Clarksdale, Mississippi, USA, d. 12 November 2007, San Marcos, California, USA. R&B stalwart Ike Turner was a music business legend for the best and worst of reasons. As the undisputed leader of the Ike And Tina Turner Revue he helped to revolutionize the world of R&B and live performance in the 60s. As a husband to Tina Tu
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