I JUST WANTED TO SING

 

Bright lights! Beautiful music! Big Celebrities! As an eight year old girl from a small, small town in Arkansas, every day I dreamed of and imagined myself in this spotlight. I was destined to become a star. Could anyone have told me that I would cross paths with many otherswho were traveling the exact road I wanted so desperately to travel?

 I didn’t have a microphone—my parents couldn’t afford one—but sometimes after an evening meal, I’d grab a leftover corncob from an empty plate, run to a mirror and sing my heart out. I never saw myself in that mirror. I was Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, Mary Wells, or even James Brown or Patsy Cline.

I scraped up all the pennies I could save to buy a stamp, an envelope and a song magazine. This magazine listed the top songs with artists and the lyrics to sing along to, and companies looking for new music talent and songwriters. When I was ten, I wrote a song and sent it to Nashville to be set to music. I waited days—weeks— and heard nothing from them until one day I discovered a letter in the mailbox. I was ecstatic! With trembling fingers I tore open the letter and then, elation turned to disappointment. They had sent my song back. They recommended that I revise and work on it more, and then send it back to them. I just knew they hated it and were trying to spare my feelings, so I dropped it in the trash, never to try again. I can’t even remember the name of it.

My high school days were the height of my singing career. Some of my favorite pastimes were talent contests, singing in the church choir or singing along with musically inclined buddies. Reading a good book or some of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s classics works were great leisure time activities. I loved reading and writing poems but enjoyed singing more.

We did things in homeroom that most kids today could not imagine. After reciting the Lord’s Prayer or the 23^rd Psalm, we’d recite the Preamble to the Constitution or sing “America the Beautiful,” or some patriotic song, then we had requests for talent. My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Payne, would always call for me to sing “Stand by me” by Ben E. King. I loved singing, even though I had stage fright, but not the same song every time. I was a celebrity and didn’t even know it.

When I was seventeen, I took an opportunity for a summer trip to Chicago, Illinois. It was a bit scary being in a big city with bright lights, but I loved every minute of that summer vacation so much that when it was time to leave, I asked my mother if I could stay and finish school there. Chicago offered so much to do, so much to see. There were R&B revues at the Regal Theatre on forty-seventh and South Park, and the Capitol Theatre on seventy-ninth and Halsted.

My senior year was fun-filled with so many new experiences. I left an all-black high school to enter one that was very culturally mixed. Being a newcomer in a large school with more students in my senior class than in the whole school I’d come from was pretty challenging. The first friends I met were underclassmen because lots of the seniors thought I was a freshie, a title given to first year high school students, until I started to participate in senior activities. First there were Cheryl and Reginald, both sophomores, then Millie and Brenda, both seniors, who became my best friends. Brenda was a bit fast for a small town girl like me, but she was a people person, a fun person and a groupie among the entertainers. I knew if I followed her she would lead me to the right people for my future singing career—and she did. I even joined an all-girl singing group. I believe we were called The Tabulations.

It was early 1967 when I heard The Temptations, Albert King, The Dells, The Monitors, Bobby McClure, and a few others were going to be performing at the Regal Theatre. This was my chance to try and meet the stars backstage as Brenda knew all of them and could make it happen. When we arrived at the theatre, Brenda went right in, but they stopped me. She told the doorman I was with her, but he still didn’t let me in. As I was pleading with him to please let me in, Paul Williams of The Temptations passed through. He politely told him that I was his sister and to let me in and kept right on walking. I was in heaven. I even had the opportunity to meet Tammy Terrell, one of my favorite female artists. She wasn’t performing that night, but had stopped in to see her beau, David Ruffin, the lead singer of The Temptations. I was right where I wanted to be, among the stars.

After the show, Brenda informed me that we were going to The Temptations’ hotel room, a move I didn’t want to make, but I didn’t want to act like the small town country girl I was or miss my chance at stardom, so I cautiously tagged along. When we arrived at the Ascot Motel, I engaged in a conversation with Melvin Franklin, nicknamed “Blue”, while Brenda was off chatting. I asked a million questions, and he candidly answered each one. He was a perfect gentleman. Towards the end of the interrogation, he asked, “Do you sing?” I told him no, but Brenda overheard the conversation and quickly acknowledged that I could sing like a bird. He smiled and quietly spoke in that audacious baritone voice, “I know she can. I can tell by the way she talks.” I was floored. It was beyond my wildest imagination that someone could tell if you could sing by the way you talked. I had just conducted my very first interview without a thought of what the future would hold.

When I left there that night, I had a whole new outlook and a different perspective on becoming an entertainer. Melvin had explained the ups and downs and ins and outs that entertainers encounter. My memories and thoughts went back to the times my mother told me the stories of Billie Holiday and Dorothy Dandridge, to name a few. I couldn’t bear the thought of drinking alcohol or taking drugs for every order of my life; to get up and stay up, to come down, to sleep or for any other reason. My dreams took on a different meaning with the memories of my mother’s words and ironically, by meeting some of the greatest entertainers the world has ever known.

Reminiscing about those days, I found myself always surrounded by musicians of some sort. I even partied with The New York City Players in Toronto, Canada in 1975 before they became the infamous group, Cameo. I never thought an interview would ever twist my dream and change my desires of becoming the great entertainer I wanted to be.

I am now a published author and an aspiring poet, who after conducting the most memorable interview of my life many years before, would never have known my true destiny, except it was always there hidden beneath the surface just waiting to be born. Sometimes, still, I’ll grab a make-believe microphone, sashay up to the mirror and belt out a classic tune—because I just wanted to sing.