|
Carleen Anderson (born 10 May 1957) is an American soul singer, who has had success in the United Kingdom. She is the daughter of the singer Vicki Anderson and stepdaughter of Bobby Byrd, and is most well known as the lead singer in the Young Disciples as well as for her own solo career.〔(Carleenanderson.net )〕 ==Early career== Anderson was raised by her paternal grandparents, David Sr. and Alberta Anderson, in Houston, Texas, during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Pastor Anderson’s Pentecostal church was located in the Fifth Ward, Houston, populated by working class African-Americans, many of whom were migrant sharecroppers, and their descendants, from Louisiana. By the time Anderson was 3 years old, she was singing solos in front of the congregation. By the age of 7, Anderson was playing piano by ear, directing the church choir and writing church songs every week for the choir to sing before her grandfather would deliver his Sunday sermons. The gospel music atmosphere was enhanced by Anderson having the benefit of her Aunt Betty Faye Anderson, soprano soloist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her Uncle, David Anderson Jr., and his daughters, Pamela and Jhelisa, along with their mother, Yvonne, had a very successful family gospel singing group that travelled the southern US states. Anderson’s birth father, Dr. Reuben Anderson Sr., is pastor of the Tower of Faith Evangelistic Church of God in Christ, in Compton California. Her mother is soul singer, Vicki Anderson who featured with James Brown during the 1960s and 1970s. Vicki Anderson (birth name, Myra Barnes) married Bobby Byrd (soul singer and childhood friend of James Brown) who formed a group with James Brown in the late 1950s called The Flames, which was later named, James Brown & The Famous Flames. After a brief marriage, Anderson gave birth to a son, Bobby Anderson, in 1979. After the divorce, Anderson lived as a single mother in Los Angeles where she received several scholarships to study classical and jazz music performance, as well as music education, at Los Angeles City College (LACC) and the University of Southern California (USC). Anderson also studied Creative Literature at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). During her studies, Anderson worked as a student tutor for extra income to support herself and her child. Anderson’s goal at the time was to become a music school teacher, but her plans were thwarted when President Ronald Reagan took music out of the curriculum in the government-sponsored schools. With only one semester left before completing her music degree, circumstances caused Anderson to take office-clerk jobs to make ends meet. In a 2005 Echoes magazine interview, Anderson says that a career in music performance was not at all on her agenda at that time. The following summer, after her Godfather, James Brown, was incarcerated in 1988, several artists from the James Brown Show toured worldwide as ‘Bobby Byrd and the JB All Stars’. It was the summer of 1989, and Anderson was asked to join the tour as the opening act. She saw this as an opportunity to have a ‘working’ holiday in Europe with her son. With her brothers Bartlett Anderson on keyboards and Tony Byrd on drums, they continued touring with the collective until 1990. Whilst on the road, Anderson was the understudy for Vicki Anderson, Marva Whitney, Lyn Collins and Martha High, with additional tutelage by Maceo Parker, Pee Wee Ellis and Fred Wesley. Anderson met Marco Nelson and Femi Williams, who later formed the Young Disciples, on this tour with Bobby Byrd and the JB All Stars. Her first London performance of Denise William’s ''Free'' at the then Town and Country Club (now, the Kentish Town Forum, also known as the HMV Forum) so impressed the UK natives that DJ/bassist/music producer Marco Nelson and DJ/music producer Femi Williams suggested Anderson move to England to start a singing career. This was the first time Anderson even considered such a path, and it took some convincing. She was swayed when told she could get steady work as a session singer and a songwriter. Ultimately, Anderson was motivated by the positive impact she felt raising her son in the UK would have on his life, as she could sense the violent turbulence brewing in her son’s birth town of Los Angeles, where they had lived for 10 years. In a 1998 ''Pride'' magazine interview, Anderson describes how she received much resistance from family members regarding to her relocating to the UK. However, the Rodney King riots that exploded soon after Anderson’s expatriation were proof, as far as she was concerned, that her decision to move was the right thing to do. Upon relocating with her son to the UK in the summer of 1990, Marco Nelson and Femi Williams introduced Anderson to the stirring UK underground music scene, which (for lack of a better name) was called Acid Jazz. Anderson sang lead and background vocals on a variety of music products in that season, including collaborations with Paul Weller, Bryan Ferry, Galliano, Guru and Courtney Pine, as well as recording under the assumed name of Mardou Fox for several ‘white label’ releases for record producer, Eddie Pillar. Also in 1990, Gilles Peterson and Sir Norman Jay (both top UK-based internationally acclaimed DJs) were elected by the Talkin’ Loud record label to recruit new music acts. Peterson, Jay, Nelson and Williams already had a bond as fellow DJs, resulting in Peterson and Jay signing the Young Disciples. Marco Nelson’s alliance with Paul Weller, gave the Young Disciples the advantage of recording in Weller’s Marble Arch-located Solid Bond studio, where they recorded their album, ''Road to Freedom''. The single release, Apparently Nothing, gained critical and commercial acclaim. Nelson and Williams focused on the production aspects of the music, shunning the promotional tasks required for marketing the project, which meant Anderson was courted by several record companies to pursue a solo career. This friction divided the musical group. With her priority as a single mother to provide a secure future for her son, Anderson felt her best option was as a solo artist. In an October 2011 Jazz FM radio interview with BBC presenter, Jumoke Fashola, Anderson states that a solo music performance career, up until that time, had been the furthest thing from her mind. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Carleen Anderson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|