Dorothy Love Coates
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Dorothy Love Coates (Template:Nee McGriff; January 30, 1928 – April 9, 2002) was an American gospel singer, composer and songwriter, and a civil rights activist.
Family
Dorothy McGriff was born on January 30, 1928, in Birmingham, Alabama,<ref name=":2">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":3">Template:Cite book</ref> as one of seven children.<ref name=":0">"Dorothy Love Coates, Singer Of Gospel Music, Dies at 74", The New York Times, April 9, 2002.</ref> Her early years were hard (she later described them as "the same old thing").<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> Her father, Lillar McGriff, a minister,<ref name=":4">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> left the family when she was six, divorcing her mother thereafter.<ref name=":1" /> Dorothy began playing piano in the Baptist Church at age ten,<ref name=":1" /> then joined her sisters and brother in the McGriff Singers, who had a weekly live radio broadcast slot on WJLD radio station.<ref name=":4" />
Dorothy quit high school after 10th grade 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.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> She began singing with the Gospel Harmonettes,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> then known as the Gospel Harmoneers, in the early 1940s. She said of this time: "on weekdays I worked for the white man. On weekends I sang for the people."<ref name=":5">Template:Cite news</ref>
On September 9, 1944, 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. On September 24, 1959, she married Carl Coates, bassist and guitarist of the Sensational Nightingales.<ref name=":2" /> This marriage lasted until his death in 1999.<ref name=":5" />
Musical success
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Coates rose to stardom in the 1950s as a member of The Original Gospel Harmonettes.<ref name=":1" /> With her "raggedy", "raspy" and "rough" voice and preacher's fire, Coates could outsing the most powerful, hard male gospel singers of the era. She helped the group become a powerhouse.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Coates was also a notable composer, writing songs such as "You Can't Hurry God (He's Right On Time)",<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> "99 and a Half Won't Do", and "That's Enough".<ref name=":1" />
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, a pianist whose style of playing was much imitated, its lead singer was Mildred Madison Miller, a mezzo-soprano who had a down-home sound that came to be a symbol of the group. The group included Odessa Edwards, Vera Conner Kolb, and Willie Mae Newberry Garth. 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 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 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,<ref name=":1" /> directing pointed criticisms from the stage of the evils she saw in the church and in the world at large.
Civil rights activism
During the years of her retirement from music, from 1959 to 1961, (then) Dorothy Love became active in the civil rights movement, working with Martin Luther King Jr.<ref name=":1" /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She worked at voter registration drives,<ref name=":4" /> was present at the so-called Newark Riots in 1967,<ref name=":3" /> and was arrested and imprisoned for a time in Birmingham Jail for her campaigning.<ref name=":6">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She regarded jail as an honour,<ref name=":5" /> and 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 Vietnam War, racism and other evils. She was just as plainspoken when criticizing the exploitative treatment that she and other gospel singers received from gospel promoters, both White and Black.Template:Citation needed
Return to music
She re-formed the Harmonettes in 1961,<ref name=":1" /> and when that group disbanded later in the decade, she continued touring with a group known as the Dorothy Love Coates Singers,<ref name=":6" /> featuring her sister Lillian McGriff.<ref name=":0" /> In her song "The Hymn," released in 1964, she sang: "When the president was assassinated, the nation said, 'Where is God?' When the little children lost their lives in the church bombing, the nation cried, 'Where is God?' I got the answer for you today: God is still on the throne."<ref name=":0" />
Coates 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, leading a chorus of formerly enslaved singers, at the end of her career.<ref name=":0" />
Death
Coates died in a hospital in her native Birmingham, Alabama on April 9, 2002, of heart disease, at the age of 74.<ref name=":0" />
Legacy
{{ safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst||date=__DATE__ |$B= {{ safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst||date=__DATE__ |$B= Template:Ambox }} }} 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". The Jerry Garcia Band recorded her "I'll Be with Thee" on Cats Under the Stars, and performed "Strange Man" in concert. Singer Mavis Staples has stated that Dorothy Love Coates was an influence on her vocal style.
References
Further reading
- Horace Clarence Boyer, How Sweet the Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel Elliott and Clark, 1995, Template:ISBN.
External links
- Music video: Template:YouTube from The Best Of Dorothy Love Coates And The Original Gospel Harmonettes, ℗ 1957 Specialty Records/Fantasy, Inc.