Besides, by January 1961, I was pregnant again. Our son, Michael, was born in August at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark—strangely enough, in the same room as Gary. I took a few weeks off from my job at RCA, then put baby Michael with Gary into day care so I could go back to work. With two small boys, a full-time job, and singing with the Drinkards, I just didn’t have time for any other commitments.
But right around that time, John got himself into a jam. He’d promised producer Henry Glover that he’d bring Dionne in to do a session, but she had gotten a call from Scepter Records to do another session for them at the same time. John was stuck, and he begged me to step in. I didn’t want to, but I knew it was important for John to show that he was reliable—so for his sake, I agreed to take Dionne’s place and sing the backup soprano part.
When we arrived at the studios, I could tell Henry Glover wasn’t too happy to see me walking in the door instead of Dionne. John calmed him down long enough to let him hear me sing—and when Henry heard me, he changed his mind fast. That’s how my journey into background work began—a journey that would change not only my life, but the recording industry, too, which would take a whole new approach to background singing.
That session, we were backing up Ronnie Hawkins, a rockabilly star from Arkansas who was being groomed as the new Elvis. The first day lasted until six in the morning, and we had to come back in for the next three days to finish. By the time we wrapped everything up, I was exhausted, though I had to admit the money was good. Still, I had bad feelings about the job, as I knew my sisters would disapprove.
As members of a younger generation, Dionne and Dee Dee got a pass from our family on singing popular music. But I was a few years older than they were, so my sisters expected me to stick to the old ways—to uphold the tradition of separating sacred and pop music. I was torn, as I wanted to keep singing backup, but I didn’t want to let down the family. And I’d been struggling with this my whole life, ever since my sister Annie and I used to listen to those old Victrola records in secret at home.
After a lot of thought and prayer, I finally took the attitude that I could be in the world of secular music, but not of it. I consoled myself with the thought that I wasn’t trying to be a pop star, or bring attention to myself, or make anyone stray—no, I was just doing a job. And that job didn’t make me any less faithful than anyone else. So I decided to keep on doing background singing, never imagining where it would soon lead me.
As soon as I decided to continue doing background singing, the work came fast and furious. During the first few months after Michael was born, Dionne, Dee Dee, and I worked with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller on an album by the Drifters. From the start, Jerry and Mike were impressed with our rapport, going on about how we “felt each other” and “breathed together.” But you know, it really wasn’t magic—it was just that we’d all been in the New Hope choir, and so we had a lot of experience singing together.
Jerry and Mike knew how to use everything available to them to create a finished recording—how to pull together the lyrics, the arrangement, the instruments, and the voices to create something special. I admired how they used our voices; they raised pop music to another level. So I watched and studied, and tried to learn as much as I could from them. I loved to sing, but on a deeper level, I wanted to understand how songs really worked, and how they could be made better.
We worked on Drifters songs like “On Broadway,” “Some Kind of Wonderful,” and “Please Stay,” rehearsing at Jerry and Mike’s offices in the Brill Building in Manhattan. We were so busy that I had to quit my job at RCA—but the truth was, I earned as much doing two sessions in New York as I did working a whole week at RCA. And I added to those earnings when I joined the union and became the contractor—the person who selects and hires the background singers—for our sessions. Music was now not only my passion, but my profession as well.
One day while we were recording for the Drifters, the great songwriter Burt Bacharach stopped by to listen. His ears perked right up when he heard Dionne, and before leaving he asked if she could sing on some of his projects. She started out just doing demos of his songs for other artists, but she was determined to do more—and her voice was not to be denied. Burt soon agreed to record her as a solo artist.
Dionne signed with Scepter Records in 1962, and her solo recording “Don’t Make Me Over” was released in November of that year. Dee Dee, Sylvia Shemwell, and I sang background on the song, and by December it had climbed into the Top Ten. At age twenty-two, Dionne had her first hit record. And that same month, I discovered I was pregnant once again—with the baby that I so desperately hoped would be a girl.
“Don’t Make Me Over” opened up a steady stream of work for me from Scepter Records. As my pregnancy progressed, the girls and I worked with such artists as Chuck Jackson, Maxine Brown, and the Shirelles. We also worked with great producers like Leiber and Stoller, Burt Bacharach, Bert Berns, and Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records, which had become the home of soul music. We were busier than ever, and I probably spent at least as much time in the studios as I did at home. John would drive me into Manhattan in the mornings and come back to pick me up when the sessions ended. When we worked for Atlantic, Tom Dowd, who was their genius chief engineer, looked after me during the day—but I think Tom started to get a little nervous during that summer of 1963, when I was overdue and big as a house.
When I first started doing sessions in New York, I had mixed feelings about working with people I didn’t know—particularly white people. Maybe it stemmed from hearing stories about my family’s experiences back in Georgia, or maybe it was because my life had been centered in Newark’s black working-class neighborhoods, and on St. Luke’s with its black congregation. I just didn’t know many white people growing up, so I didn’t really know what to expect.
But doing studio work, I got to know and like a little group of brilliant but kooky soul brothers, Jews, Irishmen, Hispanics, and Italians—and they all became my buddies. We were making music that brought together all of our talents and combined all of our cultural backgrounds. It really was a rich tapestry, and learning to appreciate that was the first step in broadening my somewhat narrow worldview.
Although I was well past my due date, I just kept on singing. And that’s what I was doing right up until that day in August 1963 when Nippy was born.
Ihad hoped and prayed to have a baby girl, and now that I finally had her, I wanted to give her the best life we could. And that meant moving out of the apartment where we lived on Eighth Street and into a real house.
I was laid up for two months after Nippy was born as was the custom at the time, but John got busy looking for a house in a better neighborhood. He found a place on Wainwright Street in Newark, and we were able to get a loan from a friend and close on it within a few weeks. We also made some improvements, putting in a new kitchen and living room, and soon we had the home I’d always dreamed of. We even got a dog for the kids.
The best thing about the house, though, was the neighborhood. Our old apartment on Eighth Street had been a third-floor walkup in a busy, working-class urban neighborhood. But the Wainwright House was in an area that was more like a village, with brick row houses occupied by young families like ours, and backyards where children could play safely. It was still a working-class area, but it was quieter and less crowded.
I was so proud that my children would have physical comforts that I never had growing up. For a lot of black people who left the South and settled in the North during that time, this was something our families always preached to us: We wanted to see our kids do better than we had, to have the chance to really make something of themselves. My parents