Zora Young
The Money Wasn’t There But We Had It In Our Hearts
By: Scott M. Bock
From Issue #165 of Living Blues Magazine
Zora Young has been singing professionally for more
than 30 years but has never caught the break she deserves. Nevertheless, the Mississippi native remains
committed to her craft, and continues to gig regularly in her adopted Chicago
and in Europe, where she has been a frequent visitor for 20 years. Young’s deep, powerful voice enables her to sing
what she refers to as “men songs,” but she suspects that her vocal prowess has
also led to professional jealousy among her male musical colleagues.
Young’s repertoire is versatile, and at her shows she
shifts readily between traditional twelve-bar blues, horn-inflected R & B
tunes a la Tina Turner, and ballads in the style of Dinah Washington. She developed her singing skills as a child
in Mississippi churches before moving north to Chicago, where she began singing
in local clubs. After a long stretch on
the chitlin’ circuit her career took a new direction when she landed the role
of Bessie Smith in a popular touring musical.
Young is relatively underrecorded given the length of her career, though
she has to her credit several singles and four full-length albums, most
recently the Delmark CD Learned My Lesson.
During our interviews, Young warmly recalled her musical
experiences and fellow musicians, but also revealed her toughness, a quality
necessary to make it in the blues business from humble beginnings.
“[My
family] are Mississippi people and they moved Mississippi to Chicago with
them. My Mom—she didn’t like the
field. I don’t think my Daddy did it
too long. I think he worked in a place
making parts. They wanted to get away
from that sharecropping thing.
“I was an
only child and was born in West Point [Mississippi] in 1948. But I left really early. I remember that they took me to the field
and how hot it was [laughs]! My
stepfather say I told him, ‘Look, we gotta do better than this because I can’t
stand this heat.’ He swears to that.
“They were
poor people. They got lucky and got a
piece of land and that was a big thing.
I can remember three room shotgun houses—which is where I was born. People raised gardens, farm animals, and
things like that.
“My family
name was Benton. My grandmother was
Azora. I got my name from her. My grandmother doesn’t know where she came
from because her mother died at birth.
But she definitely knows she’s got some Africa in her. She doesn’t know what else.
“I went to
pre-primer in Mississippi. I remember
because they brought a tub to school [when I was getting ready to move away]
and said they were going to cry in it.
They had that many tears.
“We went to
Presbyterian and Sanctified churches.
My Mother married a preacher [Young’s stepfather]. Wasn’t nobody else good enough but a
preacher [laughs]. Everybody sang in
church. I went around singing with
them. That’s what you do. He’d preach and my Mom would sing. My Mom used to travel around singing
gospel. We used to be on the
radio—WROB, West Point. I’d go down and
sing with him I would sing Get
Aboard the Sunshine Train [laughs].
“They
couldn’t shut me up. I’d hold amateur
hour in the backyard. I took sheets and
curtains and I put the boxes up so we could stand and sing. My cousin said, ‘That’s what you always
did.’
“Only two
things I ever wanted to be—a singer or a wrestler. After about 12 years old the boys could whoop me then, so that
was over [laughs].
“Young’s
musical influences weren’t limited to the church although her Mother forbid her
to listen to or sing anything but gospel music. One of her earliest musical memories is of Howlin’ Wolf playing
near her home in Mississippi. “I
remember the Wolf down there singing.
Of course, I didn’t get to go in the joint. I was too young. But I
could hear it from the outside or he’d come outside and talk to us. Not only did I see him—he took us for a ride
in a big car.” [Chester “Howlin’ Wolf”
Burnett (1910 –1976) was born near West Point and would return there every year
for an extended stay. The city now
hosts the annual Howlin’Wolf Blues Festival (www.wpnet.org).
and there are plans for a Howlin’ Wolf museum.] Although several published accounts have suggested Young is related
to Wolf, she plays down the connection.
“That’s what old people say but in Mississippi you probably couldn’t
find nobody not related to each other—especially when you live kind of close.”
When Young
was about eight her Mother and stepfather decided to move north in search of
better-paying jobs. “The men always
came first so they could get some jobs.
It looked like the Beverly Hillbillies coming down the road [laughs]. We came in a pickup truck loaded with stuff.
“My stepdad
came from Mississippi to Chicago and tried to get my mother to join him. She wasn’t interested in coming because
gangsters killed my uncle. She thought
they’d kill everybody so she went to Carbondale [Illinois], where her daddy
was. He had a little business there.
“We stayed
there [Carbondale] for a while. My mom
worked for her dad and continued to go to school for a while. My grandaddy had a café—sold gas on the
front. I would go to school and my mom
was at the other school. I’d be in this
yard and she’d be in that yard. She was
young and she needed to go back and get some schooling.”
Their
eventual move to Chicago was initially hard, and Young remembers arriving to a
“big raggly ghetto. I’d never seen
nothing like it before. I wasn’t
excited like the older people because I didn’t know about the
opportunities. I just know I never seen
nothing like that before. The big city
had rats and all kinds of stuff.
“One thing
about the way I lived in the South, it was always clean. And everything was clean in Carbondale. It wasn’t no ghetto, it was just poor. I’m sure [Chicago] had good areas, but not
where we went.
“We started
on the South Side. I had an uncle there
and we lived with my uncle until we could get our own place. He had sixteen kids, so that was an
experience. It was kind of like I was
raised with them. It was cool because
we had Saturday night lineup and we had bible classes. My uncle’s a minister and a teacher and his
wife was a beautician and a teacher, so it was cool. I love my cousins like brothers and sisters.”
Young’s
family eventually found their own place to live. “It was a three-flat building because we wanted some income. My mom—that’s the way she thinks. You know men—they don’t always stay, you
don’t keep them forever so she figured a woman needs some income property.
“I went to
Grammar School not too far from there and then I went to the DuSable [High
School]. I tried to be [a good
student]. I took it seriously. I was good at what I liked—I liked English
and science and stuff like that.”
“Young
didn’t learn much about music at school and wishes she had had the opportunity
to learn to play an instrument—her mother, afraid she wouldn’t stay with church
music, dissuaded her. The school’s
musical focus was mostly classical music, but Young recalls “my mind wasn’t on
that. I knew the words to everything I
ever heard—Tennessee Ernie Ford, anybody—but that wasn’t what they were
teaching.”
Young
enjoyed listening to country blues, and R & B on the radio, but the family
didn’t own a record player because of her mother’s concerns that Young would
listen to secular records. “She thought
it all was blues. If it wasn’t Jesus,
it all was blues. She had tunnel vision
when it comes to Jesus. But soon as
she’d turn her head [laughs] …that’s how I learned the words to
everything.” To this day, Young says
her mother believes she is wasting her talent by not singing for the church.”
Living in
the South Side, it was difficult not to encounter the blues culture. “I’d have to pass by Theresa’s [Lounge] when
I’d be going home from choir rehearsal.
Junior Wells and Buddy Guy and all them guys—and that did it. I’d pass another club too. I’d be in the window so much they’d get to
know me. I was too young to go in
there. And when I got older it was Otis
Rush and I also saw Dinah Washington once.
I’d take [my mom’s] high heels and take her things and start to look old
enough to [go into the clubs]. It
wasn’t about drinking. I love that
music.”
Young
wasn’t alone among her friends in her love of popular music. “The church choir—all those young people
loved that music. When we’d get a break
we would go around to the club and listen.
The music is the same. A matter
of fact, R &B and gospel—they’re real close. One talking about Jesus and one’s talking about their baby.”
“When I
started to do it professionally, it was R & B but the blues has stuck and I
came back to it. When I started
singing, I sang Gladys Knight and Bill Withers and Aretha Franklin and all them
people. Little did I know Junior Wells
and all made an impact on me.”
The
influence of the church on Young was also waning. “I went until I was grown enough that I could take off. I had gone to church five days a week. I was so tired I was about to have a nervous
breakdown. My mom’s still doing that
today.”
She began
performing on stage occasionally around 1969 or 1970, and by 1971 she had
hooked up with Bobby King and a few other musicians who lived nearby. “They heard me and they said, ‘Hey man,
let’s get the girl.’ They hired me but
they only give me five dollars a night.
I had a job, though. I was a
woman when I actually started to call myself professional.”
Young
continued to sing whenever she could, and gained the attention of established
Chicago artists. “I knew everybody—Eddy
Clearwater, Cary Bell, Lonnie Brooks, Jimmy Dawkins, Junior Wells and Buddy
Guy. If you talked to Buddy
today—‘Girl, when did you sing?’ ‘Cause they wouldn’t get me up on the
stage. But I didn’t stop because they
didn’t get me up.
“It didn’t
work out with my husband. We stayed
together long enough to get a bunch of babies.
This is his name I’m still wearing.
I like ‘Young’. I have four
kids—all girls. That’s why I kept
going. I thought I’d get a boy. And I got nine grandkids.”
Young’s day
job assembling books at a factory paid the bills and her mother helped care for
the children. “I’d go listen. If they let me on the stage—I would. I wanted to get up there long enough for
somebody to hear me and say we’ll hire you.”
It was a
tough apprenticeship for Young. “They
stole the money out of my purse that I made on my job. [laughs] We were singing the Night Time is the
Right Time and after I opened my purse, they had stole $300 out of
there. That was at Louise’s at 69th
in Chicago. They took advantage of me
because I had a job.
“Then I got
a band. They chose me. We were a bunch
of misfits—Zora Young and the Misfits—and one had on combat boots and one had
on overalls. Some had day jobs and some
played professional. I was changing
clothes three times a night and didn’t make enough money to even buy one
outfit. I thought that it was
glamorous. They didn’t take it [the
music] that serious.
“[We were
singing] R & B. I had a heavy voice
so I always sang men songs. Pete Allen
was my first guitar player [in the Misfits].
We played some clubs and some guys came to town and they wanted to steal
me and I wanted to go with them. They
had been Bobby Rush’s band. I got to be
the warm up vocalist and then we toured the chitlin’ circuit. We toured the South and we’d go up to big
places like Michigan, Ohio, Kansas City.
“This was
the ‘70’s. Bobby was there at first but
he lost them [the band]. They were
excellent. We were Cleaning Company
Number Three. We had a big band. We had horns, and we stepped. We didn’t make no money but we had a good
sound [laughs]. I changed clothes, we
had the whole glamour trip, the whole thing.
The money wasn’t there, but we had it in our hearts.
“It would
be like 500 people in those places. We
had a really good following there. It
was basically a black circuit. The
joints would be packed. See, they
advertised with posters. You put them
all out and people come out because they get to know you. All the soul people did—Little Milton, Bobby
Rush, Denise LaSalle.
“When you
finish there [the chitlin’ circuit] you ready for anything. We been stopped on the highway [by the
police]. We had to take all our stuff
out, show them we were who we said we were.
But it all was good. ‘Cause I
was still young enough to be excited by the whole thing—excited by my craft.”
“I like
working for blacks. It was a great
place to cut my teeth. ‘Cause they’re
the hardest audience in the world. If
you can please them, you can please anyone.”
Young was
increasingly making a name for herself and getting comfortable as a performer
but missed an opportunity she regrets today.
“If I had listened, I would have been the first recording artist for
Malaco—even before Dorothy Moore—but we had never heard of them so I thought
they were fooling me. The band said,
“There’s no such company as Malaco.
They’re just trying to use you.’
So I didn’t go with them and then they turned out to be Malaco.
Young quit
the chitlin’ circuit after about six or seven years when she found gigs on the
North Side of Chicago that paid well.
Despite the fact that she had yet to record, Young was invited to tour
France in 1981: she was well received
there. “And every year after that I
went. On the average I went three times
a year for number of years.”
Her first
recording was the 1982 two-record set “Blues With The Girls on
the Paris label [now available on CD on Blues Collection], that she split with
two fellow Chicago blues vocalists she had brought to Europe with her, Bonnie
Lee and Big Time Sarah Streeter. Hubert
Sumlin and a European band provided the backing.
Although
settling in Europe was tempting, domestic concerns took precedence. “If I didn’t have my kids, I would have
probably lived in Europe years ago. The
same people who brought Luther Allison over tried to get me to move there in
1983 but I had to take care of my babies.”
Around the
same time, Young also made some recordings with pianist Sunnyland Slim.
“A lot of
people say Sunnyland Slim started me.
He did not. I already been
touring. But he did record a 45 on me
cause I needed to be on wax [I Feel Like Stroking b/w Bus Station Blues
Airway 1001—these appear on the Sunnyland Slim CD She Got a Thing
Goin’ On on Earwig]. But I
recorded [also a 45] before him with Jump Jackson. It was with Horst Lippman [Jackson was the Chicago contact for
the German concert arranger and label owner].
Of course, I wrote those tunes but it will come up as Jump Jackson
did. Nobody rehearsed. We just went in and I hit it. [Young isn’t sure what happened to this
recording].
“After the
chitlin’ circuit, I wasn’t really going where I wanted to go. I always knew Sunnyland and Jump. I was going out and doing a few gigs with
Jump—do the hotel circuit. I was
getting to know blues people in the meanwhile.
It’s impossible to live in Chicago and not know both. Jump didn’t even tell me [we were going to
record] ‘cause if I had known, I would have prepared. They had a session and
they said, ‘Do you want to come down?
Nothing is planned. If you did,
you might have thought to copyright your stuff. Money—I don’t get none of that.”
Young had
the same recording experience working with Willie Dixon—with the same
results. “Girl, I’m in the studio. You want to come down?” “To this day, I’ve never heard that record.”
Her
recording on Sunnyland’s own Airway label came about when she and Sunnyland had
a falling out. “He was clowning and
doing what Sunnyland do sometimes. And
I was mad. So in order to get me to
work with him again he asked me did I want to record a 45. I always wanted to record. I said, ‘Yes.’ I doubt if he put it too many places or pressed to many
copies. I still got it somewhere. I needed to be on the wax years before
that. I’m very underrecorded [But now]
people knew I was alive.”
Young
recalls with fondness her three years with Sunnyland Slim and the band, which
included Steve Freund on guitar and Bob Stroger on bass. “Sunnyland was always a little crazy but he
was always genuine and tried to help people,”
Young says. “You can’t be mad at
Sunnyland.”
Out of
frustration with her inability to interest a record company in a full-length
recording, Young decided to produce her own record. Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones, which was
released on the Belgian label Blue Sting in 1983. She enlisted sax and guitar player Maurice John Vaughn to help
her with the project and finally had something for her fans to buy. [Around the same time she appeared on a
Rooster Blues single by Abb Locke that also features Otis Rush and Nolan
Struck.]
But her
career soon took an unexpected turn when her friend, blues singer Valerie
Wellington, told her about auditions for the play Heart of the Blues. “She said, ‘Zora, they got an opening on the
play.’ I say, ‘I’m not going. I can’t act.’ She said, ‘Zora, you’re on stage already.’ I said, ‘Well, what parts are open?’ She said, ‘Mamie Smith is open cause I got
the star’s part [Bessie Smith].’ I was
there an hour before I had the star’s part.
They thought Valerie was a real live Ma Rainey—in Chicago they said we
were a modern day Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.
“I already
knew [Bessie Smith’s] ‘cause—my mother was born in 1925 and my grandmother was
pregnant with her and my grandaddy ran off and he went down to Memphis and he
was running around with Bessie Smith. I
didn’t realize she was great. I had no
idea that I would play the part of her.
I had a lot of records and I’d been hearing about her all my life from
my granddaddy. He walked by the table
one day and he saw her record—he was 97 years old. He said, ‘That’s Bessie, that’s Bessie!’ I thought he was going to fall out and
die. He got excited. Bessie was a rough woman. She wasn’t no church woman.
“I think we
did it for like four nights a week. We
traveled. You dance, you sing, you
act. They taught me. Before it was over I got a few decent
write-ups. I was there three years
straight [1983 through 1985]. It got me
up on classical, old time blues that I hadn’t been doing. The New York Times gave us a nice
writeup.
“Steven
Spielberg came down to the play. He
asked us to come down for an audition.
Everybody went but me. He asked
the lady, ‘What happened to the little fat girl?’ I’m shy. I didn’t think I
could do that.
“[But] I
got lucky while I was in the play and they found me for a Timex watch
commercial. That was national and that
was good for me. My face got to be
seen. I didn’t know I was going to have
a vocal and visual.”
“It was a
hot day and I went down there with no wigs and no makeup on. They told me they like my gap tooth. I guess to be a blues mama that worked. They had a search on. I wanted to move out of my neighborhood
after that. I was afraid somebody was
going to hurt me cause they were seeing me on TV—during the Super Bowl. They thought I had some money. That was big stuff from where I came from.
“[Back
home] I just kept on trying to gigs.
Nothing big happened in my life.
Everybody went through my band.
I had Lurrie Bell in the band for a while. I brought Karen Carrol out on my stage. I had Carlos Johnson in the band. I had Carl Snyder.”
In 1992 she
recorded her second CD Travelin’ Light, for the new Deluge label,
after a friend contacted producer Randy Labbe, who helped assemble an all-star
band for the recording that included Pinetop Perkins on piano, Jerry Portnoy on
harmonica, and Willie Smith on drums.
“When
things got kicking, not only did they record me, they recorded Pinetop, Eddie
Kirkland—and Johnny Lee Hooker sat in on that.
But they didn’t trust me. They
weren’t going to put my record out first.
They were the big names—the big fish.
He [Labbe] told me he was surprised [at how well my recording came
out]. We got another one in the
can. We actually did another
session.” Another CD, I Got a
Right to Sing the Blues [1995, Blues Rock Connection], was put together
in five hours and saw limited distribution, she believes only in Europe.
In 2002
Young recorded the well-received CD Learned My Lesson for
Chicago’s Delmark Records, penning five of the CD’s songs herself. She enjoyed working with piano player Ken
Saydak, who also produced the CD, and is pleased with the exposure an
established label gives her. “I know
something after being out here 30 years,”
she said. “I know what I can do
or what I can’t do. I hope they were
happy with it.”
Young has
made over 20 trips overseas—to China, Turkey, Italy, Austria, Germany,
Switzerland, France and Jamaica—and is finally beginning to gain more acclaim
at home. She tours regularly around the
States, and back home has appeared several times at the Chicago Blues Festival
and frequently performs at the club Blue Chicago. She helped bring in the millennium in a televised program with
old friend Buddy Guy and laughs heartily telling the story about how she was
brought on stage in style, wearing furs and riding in a red Cadillac before
performing with Guy, backed by a gospel choir.
Meanwhile,
her mom remains supportive but still wishes Zora would quit the blues. “She still waiting on me to come to
Jesus. I feel like I’m there but she
don’t.”
