Little could Rita have known the path to which her parents' influence would lead. She's performed with Ray Charles, Harry James, Kenny Burrell, Oscar Peterson and many others. Along the way, she's also crossed paths with Redd Foxx, Mike Post and Howard Hughes, to name a few. It's a course Rita Graham has followed intuitively. "People ask me how I do all these things. I tell them that I don't do anything," Rita says. "I do what that voice in my head tells me to do. It's a spiritual thing, like a beacon."
By the time she moved from Detroit to California in her late teens, Rita knew that music, and not an impending career as a schoolteacher, was her destiny. Gigs in Los Angeles led to an Australian tour, where she met Ray Charles backstage in Sydney. "Ray and I started singing, and I knew all those songs that he started throwing at me." Back in LA, the tour behind her, her mother soon had a phone message for her to say Ray Charles was interested in putting out an album by Rita.
The LP, Vibrations, was released on Charles' Tangerine label in 1968. Shortly after she'd finished the record, Rita got another call from Charles. His vocalists, the Raelettes, walked out on him the day of a show. "He called and said, 'What are you doing today?' He said, 'Come on down here. I need a little help today.' That night, we were standing onstage at the Coconut Grove."
After a year with Ray Charles, Rita spent several months on the road opening for Oscar Peterson, Redd Foxx and George Kirby and then joined the Harry James Band for a stay of over three years. "It was a busy time," she says. "I was singing 'You Made Me Love You' by night and recording country rock with composer Mike Post by day. I was very happy, and I knew something was going to click. I knew it was going to blossom into something big, but it didn't. I was too young to realise that in order for my career to succeed, I needed to seek out and hire professional management."
In 1974, she landed the role of Coretta Scott King in the musical production, Selma. She reprised the role off-Broadway in 1983. Also in 1974, comedian Redd Foxx, one of the show's financial backers, brought Rita to Atlanta to perform scenes from the play at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference event. The visit sowed the seeds for Rita's eventual move to Atlanta. In the late '80s, Rita worked in an LA-based ensemble with saxophonist Steve Hooks (who performed on and helped produce her Sambuca CD). By 1990, though, she was ready for a change of scenery for her family, which included two daughters and a granddaughter. She remembered her Atlanta visit and soon the entire family, including her husband and mother, had relocated.
Rita performed at the now-defunct Sounds of Buckhead restaurant, and later was a featured vocalist in the African-American Philharmonic Orchestra. She began her Sambuca stint in May 1999, working usually with keyboardist Jez Graham (no relation), bassist Gary Land and drummer Mike Nepote.
Could you tell us about your childhood and upbringing in Detroit, and how you became a singer?
Which artists have been your main musical influences?
I was soon married with a daughter, and singing in the clubs at night gave me a way to earn money without my little girl ever realising that I was gone. I listened and loved so many vocalists that it's hard to say which ones influenced me. That is such a hard question, because every singer I've ever heard influenced me. As I think about it, I realise that I love performances, from Aretha Franklin, Barbara Streisand, Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan and many who aren't well-known, such as Denise LaSalle, Phyllis Hyman, Etta James and Millie Jackson. I may not particularly love everything a singer sings, but certain performances are wonderful. The big-voiced male singers particularly affect my mood centres; for example, Ray Charles, Joe Williams, Walter Jackson, Arthur Prysock, Lou Rawls, O C Smith, Luther Vandross, Bill Medly, Barry White and so many others are among my favourites.
Rare Soul collectors will be very interested in any details on 'Gone With the Wind Is My Love' - what are your recollections of this particular point in your singing career?
Lou Barreto Comments:
"In the early '60s, I wrote the song called 'Gone With the Wind Is My Love'. Originally, the Tiara's were the feature group for the tune. They rehearsed the song at their house in Santa Ana California and laid down a home tape recording of the tune. The group consisted of three girls - Edna, Joyce and Latosha. Edna was the lead singer and went on become a part of the Ike & Tina Turner team for about ten years. I got hold of Jack Eskew in Hollywood and gave him the tape to listen and I said 'let's do the arrangement with a Motown feeling', and he came up with an excellent arrangement. We did the recording at Nashville recordings (used to be Capitol Records). The engineer was Sy Mitchell who now works for Capitol. When we selected Edna to sing the lead on 'Gone With the Wind', her voice just did not feel right for that tune ... Edna has an excellent voice, but the tune did not fit her style, so we started looking for another performer.
Can't remember who introduced me to Rita. I visited Rita when she was living with her mother in Los Angeles, California and discussed the possibility of singing the tune 'Gone With the Wind'. Rita accepted the challenge, I gave her a copy of the song to learn and then it came time to go into the studio. Her voice fitted the tune and it was a good match. Hence, we dubbed Rita's voice on an open track and the rest was history. We then negotiated with Dore Records owner Lew Bedell to promote and distribute the song locally and nationally as well as securing production royalties for production and artists."
Can you tell us about your time with Ray Charles' backing band, the Raelettes?
Right after we cut 'Gone With the Wind', I got a gig working with a rhythm & blues band in Sydney, Australia at the famous King's Cross Whisky A-Go-Go. That was a fabulous experience. After I sang on the Sydney Tonight Show without the band, they separated me from the band and booked me into a showroom in the Hotel Australia in Adelaide, Australia with a ten-piece jazz band. The night before I was scheduled to leave Australia after four months, my Australian buddy insisted on going to the Armory to see my friends who were working with Ray Charles (Billy Preston, drummer Billy Moore and the band manager Curtis Amy, who later played all of the horns on Carol King's Tapestry Album).
It was freezing cold, and I really wanted to go back to the hotel. Curtis Amy was then married to one of the Raelettes, Merry Clayton. My friend, drummer Billy Moore had quit the band just before their Australian tour. Curtis Amy and Billy Preston took me into RC's dressing room before the show - and RC did that 'I can guess your weight by holding your wrist' thing, which was really uncanny, because he guessed my weight accurately. After the show, we hung around the dressing room talking about music. RC sat at the piano, moving his fingers around the chords, soon, the subject turned to obscure tunes. It isn't commonly known how much RC loved songs - all kinds of songs in every genre - he was what is known as a 'tune junkie' and so am I (he and I would have 'tune contests', to see if one of us could come up with a song the other didn't know. Of course, he usually won, but I 'got' him every now and then). I think the fact that I knew so many songs in so many areas is what set me apart from other singers he'd worked with, which amazed me because he was surrounded by great singers.
The Raelettes at that time were Clydie King, Merry Clayton, Alex Brown, who was named Brandi Alexander by RC's manager, Joe Adams) and Gwendolyn Berry. Alex Brown went on to become one of Stevie Wonder's long-time background singers. I left Australia the day after we met, and I thought that was the end of that. I'm currently in the process of completing a Ray Charles Tribute CD called My Days with Ray that includes the first song we sang together that night, 'This Is the Moment' (he played a chord and sang the first line and I sang the next one - we were both delighted, because it's not a song that most people have ever heard). My tribute CD is a collection of special songs that I knew RC loved and were a part of the two and a half years I spent with him.
Three months after I returned to Los Angeles from Australia, my mom answered the phone and she was thrilled when she realized who was calling. I wasn't there, and when I got home, my mother said, 'You'd better sit down. Ray Charles wants to produce an album for you.' I almost fainted! As it turned out, RC cut 2-3 tunes at a time, in between his tour dates. These 4 or 5 recording sessions were very big, with strings on top of the Ray Charles 18-piece band. The arrangements were written by Sid Feller who produced Ray's 'Georgia On My Mind'.
What was the real Ray Charles like behind his public persona?
For that year and a half while we were recording the album Rita Graham Vibrations, I got to know RC without all the trappings of the international star. We were in private sessions in the studio and he told me so much of his life and inner feelings. We talked about everything - his drug addiction and his trials and tribulations to overcome it; his mother's strength and her determination to make him independent; his blindness and his intuitive and wise philosophies. At that time, RC would fly by himself all over the world if he had somewhere he wanted to go, and he would leave the show to come to LA to work with me. The Vibrations album is comprised mainly of old standards, with only two 'original' songs, all personally chosen by Ray Charles. To this day, I am the only single female/Raelette for whom RC produced a major recording on his own label, Tangerine Records, that was then distributed by ABC Paramount (TRC1507).
I've noticed that several labels are re-producing and selling Rita Graham Vibrations on eBay and I'm wondering how that's done, so that I can sell it myself!
I read somewhere that the success of the Vibrations album had an adverse effect on the other Raelettes?
I didn't know it at the time, but years later, I realised that once it was known that my album was released, it became the 'straw that broke the camel's back' for RC's Raelettes. They all quit one night while the show was booked into LA's premiere night club, the Coconut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel. The next morning after I had been at the Grove, 'glowing' to everyone about my album that Ray Charles had produced, RC called me and asked me to be at his office in the Washington Boulevard RPM Studios within the hour. Two other girls there, Beverly LeShure, Susaye Green and I, made up the new (instant) Raelettes. That night, we were standing on the stage of the Grove, and I was a nervous wreck. Unlike the other girls, I'd had no experience with harmony and group singing, because I'd never been a church singer and I'd never been with any singing group, except for solo work with a professional choir when I was eleven.
I was surprised when you told me recently that you'd done some work with Sherlie Matthews who we featured in December 2008.
In the late '60s, a friend named Frank Walker formed an eight-voice group, ala the Manhattan Transfer. This was where I met Sherlie Matthews, who was one of the four female voices. Frank Walker had led a sparkling four-voice vocal group called the Zeniths that had worked in Las Vegas and had been managed by the Platters' manager, Buck Ram. Unfortunately, Walker's new eight-voice group wasn't together long enough to have had a name. I never got to know the other singers in this group.
Can you tell us about your time with Mike Post?
When I met Mike Post he was Music Director of the NBC Andy Williams Show. I was signed to Mike Post Productions long before he became TV's most prolific and well known composer. He had enjoyed one hit record, Mason Williams' Classical Jazz, and he had a production deal with Bell Records that later became Arista Records. I was the only female artist he had signed and I thought this one would be a great fit for me. We cut several singles, including a great JJ Jackson ('But It's Alright'), dance/soul song called 'Black Daylight'. I don't know what happened to any of these recordings. Up until the Age of the Internet, an artist without strong management had no clout at all, and was usually left in the dark about the direction of their products. I loved working with Mike, who made great records, but after three years and eight single recordings that he produced for me, his career began to take off in another direction, as he found his niche in composing TV music, 'Rockford Files', 'Hill Street Blues', 'the A-Team', 'Law and Order' and many others.
You appeared in a musical at one point?
I played the female lead of Coretta Scott King in the joyous Civil Rights musical, Selma, that began in a church basement in Los Angeles, California - then on to the Inner City Theater in Los Angeles, where it ran six nights a week for over a year. The comedian Redd Foxx produced it on a grander scale that ran for three months at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Hollywood - and again, Producer Woodie King Jr presented Selma off-Broadway in 1983 at the New Federal Theater, New York. Although I originated the role of Coretta Scott King, I am not singing the 'Coretta' role on the Selma cast album recorded by Atlantic Records due to contract conflicts, but I had permission to sing in the chorus.
What was your involvement with CBS Records?
There was a brief period when I was signed to CBS Records with ex-Motown producer/writer Johnny Bristol (Jr Walker's recordings and Diana Ross' 'Someday We'll Be Together') who took me to CBS but he became disenchanted with CBS and pulled out of his production deal, leaving me without a producer and consequently without product.
You recorded a song for the Motown-owned Prodigal label.
A few years later, I recorded several singles with saxophonist Steve Hooks that I co-wrote and co-produced. Nothing has ever happened with these recordings, although I still like the way they sound. Steve now lives and works in Munich, Germany and is currently working on finalising the tracks for my Ray Charles Tribute CD, produced by my sister, Anna Richardson and I. This new CD should be finished in the early spring 2009. (www.Stevehooksmusik.com) Steve produced the final version of a 'live' CD that I recorded here in Atlanta titled, Rita Graham Live At Sambuca Atlanta, and he supervised the final mixing and mastering of the Sambuca CD in Munich. The Sambuca CD is a collection consisting of a mixture of jazz standards, along with two blues and two original songs that documented some of the music we still perform at Atlanta's famous jazz showrooms.
Which songs are your personal favourites among your own recordings?
Concerning my own recordings, I love several of them for different reasons. Several cuts from the Vibrations album - 'Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars' (R.C.'s favourite), 'My Cup Runneth Over' and 'Charade', the single 'Gone With the Wind Is My Love', 'Never Make Your Move Too Soon' - which is a blues from the Sambuca CD, 'Wonder Worker' - a love song that Steve Hooks and I wrote that I re-recorded on the 'live' Sambuca CD, the single 'Rich Man, Poor Man' and a duet single I recorded with Mike Post producing for Bell Records, in which I sang with a male vocalist named Bob Rheir, titled 'You're Walkin' on the Outside of My Good Side'/'It's a Good Feelin' - two soul tunes - the artists' names on the record are 'Rye and Rita Jean'. These are among my favourites.
Could you tell us about the Georgia Legacy Foundation?
Currently, I'm Executive Secretary of the Georgia Legacy Foundation, GeorgiaLegacyFoundation.org. This organisation, founded by The Crown Prince of the Blues, Sammy Blue, promises artists' support, along with education, concerts and various means of 'keeping music alive' through preservation.
You've toured the world singing; what are your fondest memories of the venues and countries you've visited?
© Rob Jones 2009