She quickly made her mark singing backup vocals for such rock luminaries as Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Dave Mason, and Duane Allman on the duo ’s most popular album Delaney, Bonnie, and Friends. & the MG ’s, introduced Rita to Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett. ” The song was popular regionally, but only scaled the bottom of the national charts.Ĭoolidge moved to Los Angeles shortly thereafter. The studio honchos liked what they heard and gave her a shot at a recording her first record, “Turn Around and Love You. Far more lucrative was her work at Pepper Sound, a jingle studio in Memphis, where she recorded radio station IDs and commercial ditties. and the Moonpies and played gigs at frat parties to help finance her education. While attending Florida State University, she formed a folk group called R.C. When she was 15 years old, the family moved to Florida. ”Īttending high school in Nashville, Coolidge was a member of the same debate team as country/pop hitmaker Brenda Lee. She wrote songs about her family and her journeys as a young girl in the 1870s and the lives of her children and songs about us, her grandkids. “Mama Stewart …, ” she explained to Poet, “kept the family history by writing songs. Their heritage was kept alive for them in the stories told by their maternal grandmother. ” Although Coolidge ’s father, a Baptist preacher, was a full-blooded Cherokee and her mother was half Cherokee and half Scots, the three sisters were raised in a predominantly white Tennessee community. Since my father and mother and grandmothers all sang, music was a natural part of our lives, just like sleeping and eating. “And later on, we had solo spots during service. “I was singing close harmony with my sisters in church when I was two, ” she told J. In the years since her string of hit records during the 1970s, she formed a family vocal group, called Walela, whose music reflects the soul of their Native American ancestry.Ĭoolidge and her two sisters, Priscilla and Linda, were blessed with powerful singing voices. Rita Coolidge emerged from the hippie-rock and psychedelic blues era as a stylist who transformed everything from folk, rock, country and soul into sensual pop music.
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