Dorothy Love Coates

All Music Guide:

Perhaps the most underrated gospel vocalist and songwriter of black gospel's golden age, Dorothy Love Coates represented, in the words of Craig Werner's A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America, "the best of what the early '60s offered: a model of call and response rooted in an unflinching engagement with history; an understanding of the world that sends pulses of energy back and forth between gospel and the blues; an unwavering commitment to the beloved community; a refusal to be seduced into a mainstream where the value of life is measured in money; and music so powerful it can change your life."

It changed the fortunes of many more famous music stars. Holland-Dozier-Holland based the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" on Coates' "(You Can't Hurry God) He's Right on Time"; Wilson Pickett used the Gospel Harmonettes' version of the classic theme "99 and a Half Won't Do" as the model for his soul hit; Little Richard, among others, copied Coates' stentorian vocal leads. In addition, Coates was one of the few gospel stars to vocally oppose segregation, often appearing at civil rights rallies during the late '50s and early '60s. ("The Lord has blessed our going out and our coming in. He's blessed our sitting in, too.") This was all the more brave because Coates lived in Birmingham, AL, the most dangerous city in the U.S. for such activists, and she was not then singing professionally. "At night I'd sing for the people, days I'd work for the white man," as she put it to gospel historian Tony Heilbut.

The Gospel Harmonettes -- Mildred Miller Howard, mezzo-soprano; Odessa Edwards, contralto and sermonizer; Willie May Newberry, contralto; and pianist Evelyn Starks -- were already Birmingham radio celebrities in the 1940s when the several years younger Dorothy McGriff joined them. After winning on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts TV program, the Harmonettes made some less than stellar sides for RCA in 1949. With Dorothy taking over more forcefully, they became national gospel stars soon after they began recording for Specialty Records in 1951.

That July, they traveled to Hollywood and made "I'm Sealed" and "Get Away Jordan," both of which became standards. Dorothy soon married Willie Love, the great lead voice of the Fairfield Four, although that marriage didn't last long. (She later married Carl Coates, bass voice and guitarist with the Sensational Nightingales, thus becoming Dorothy Love Coates.) The group's summer 1953 Specialty session produced "No Hiding Place," another classic; their 1956 date, "You Must Be Born Again"; and in August 1956, the group's two greatest recordings, "99 and a Half Won't Do" and, above all, "That's Enough."

They traveled the "gospel highway" from church to church and town to town, all through the South, Midwest, and in such northern cities as Philadelphia, New York, and Newark (where her childhood friend, Alex Bradford, was also established as a gospel star). In 1959, they began recording for Savoy Records in Newark. From later in 1959 to 1961, Dorothy retired to care for a newborn daughter with epilepsy and cerebral palsy. In 1961, the group, which adjusted its membership to include Cleo Kennedy (later a backup singer for Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen), recorded for Savoy, and then in 1964 for Vee-Jay, an affiliation that lasted until 1968, when they did a few songs for Okeh/Columbia (including the remarkable "Strange Man") and made some discs for Nashboro. Neither Coates nor her group recorded since about 1970, although Coates was intermittently active in live performance during subsequent years.

As a vocalist, Dorothy Love Coates stood out from any previous female lead in gospel because she was as much preacher as singer. Her vocals were always hoarse, sometimes sounding as if she'd actually damaged her throat shouting and testifying. But she swung behind all that hammering, and her records have power and drive that is virtually unmatched in any American music.

Wikipedia:

Dorothy Love Coates (January 30, 1928 – April 9, 2002) was an American gospel singer.

Biography

Early years

Born Dorothy McGriff in Birmingham, Alabama, her early years were hard, (she later described them as "the same old thing"). Her minister father left the family when she was six, divorcing her mother thereafter. Dorothy began playing piano in the Baptist Church at age ten, then joined her sisters and brother in the McGriff Singers several years later.

Dorothy quit school to work "all the standard Negro jobs" available in Birmingham in the 1940s: scrubbing floors and working behind the counter in laundries and dry cleaners. She began singing with the Gospel Harmonettes— then known as the Gospel Harmoneers— in the early 1940s. She married Willie Love of the Fairfield Four, one of the most popular quartets of the early years of gospel, but divorced him shortly thereafter. She subsequently married Carl Coates of the Sensational Nightingales over a decade later.

Musical success

Coates rose to stardom in the 1950s as a member of The Original Gospel Harmonettes. With her "raggedy" voice and preacher's fire she could outsing the most powerful hard gospel male singers of the era. She was also a notable composer, writing songs such as "You Can't Hurry God (He's Right On Time)", "99 and a Half Won't Do" and "That's Enough".

The Gospel Harmonettes— later renamed the Original Gospel Harmonettes— had achieved some fame in an early appearance when the National Baptist Convention came to Birmingham in 1940. Led by Evelyn Starks, an amazing pianist whose style of playing was much imitated,and featuring Mildred Madison Miller, a mezzo soprano who had a down-home sound that came to be a symbol of the group, singing as its lead singer. The group also included, Odessa Edwards, the clear voiced alto whose sermonettes could create a great deal of fervor at performances, Vera Conner Kolb, the piercing soprano of the group whose high notes came with such ease that Marion Williams and other sopranos of the time period imitated her style, and Willie Mae Thomss Newberry Garth, the group's deep-throated alto, the group had a regular half-hour radio show sponsored by A.G. Gaston, a local businessman and community leader.

The group first recorded for RCA in 1949, but without Dorothy Love, after appearing on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts television program. Those recordings while not particularly memorable are considered a rare jewel nowadays and include the two songs "In the Upper Room" and "Move on Up a little Higher".

Their first sides for Specialty Records—"I'm Sealed" and "Get Away Jordan"—recorded with Love in 1951 were far more successful, the group recorded a series of hits in the years that followed before disbanding in 1958.

Dorothy was the driving force behind the group's success, both on record and in person, singing with such spirit that the other members of the group would occasionally have to lead her back to the stage—a device that James Brown copied and made part of his act in the 1960s, but which was wholly genuine in Love's case. She also took over the role, particularly after Odessa Edwards' retirement, of preacher/narrator, directing very pointed criticisms from the stage of the evils she saw in the church and in the world at large.

During the years of her retirement, from 1959 to 1961, Dorothy Love—now Dorothy Love Coates—became active in the civil rights movement, working with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As she was fond of telling church audiences, "The Lord has blessed our going out and our coming in. He's blessed our sitting in, too." While many other gospel artists were slow to address political issues head-on, Coates spoke out against the war in Vietnam, racism and other evils.

Coates was just as plainspoken when criticizing the exploitative treatment that she and other gospel singers received from gospel promoters, both white and black. She reformed the Harmonettes in 1961 and later, when that group disbanded later in the decade, continued touring with a group known as the Dorothy Love Coates Singers. She recorded, both individually and with her group, on Savoy Records, Vee-Jay Records and Columbia Records in the 1960s and made occasional appearances but no recordings after 1980. She appeared in the films "The Long Walk Home" and "Beloved" at the end of her career.

Coates died in Birmingham on April 9, 2002, of heart failure, at the age of 74.

Musical influences

While Coates vigorously rejected all offers to cross over to pop or soul music, a number of artists, including Little Richard, imitated her sanctified singing style. Other secular songwriters drew on her songs for inspiration, sometimes simply taking the title, as in the case of Wilson Pickett's wholly different soul tune "99 and a Half Won't Do", and sometimes adapting both lyrics and title, as in the case of the Supremes's hit "You Can't Hurry Love".