Esther phillips wiki
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In 1962, Kenny Rogers discovered her singing at a Houston club and helped her get a contract with Lenox Records, owned by his brother Lelan.
Comeback
Phillips eventually recovered enough to launch a comeback in 1962. Phillips lost to Aretha Franklin, but Franklin presented the trophy to her, saying she should have won it instead.
In 1975, she released a disco-style update of Dinah Washington's "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes", her biggest hit single since "Release Me".
It reached the Top 20 in the United States and the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart. Esther lost out at the 1972 awards to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.
It was the Grammy Aretha had won in the same category six years straight, she’d go on to win twice more, before being beaten by Natalie Cole. On her release, she moved back to Los Angeles and re-signed with Atlantic.
Tuesday marks what would have been her 90th birthday.
Phillips’ country song “Release Me” reached No. 8 on the Billboard chart in 1962 and led to her groundbreaking 1966 album “The Country Side of Esther.”
Journalist Michael Hall, who wrote about Phillips for Texas Monthly, calls it the “greatest country album you’ve never heard.”
“ I’ve known her music all my life.
The Beatles flew her to the UK for her first overseas performances.
She had other hits in the 1960s for Atlantic, such as the critically acclaimed Jimmy Radcliffe song "Try Me", which featured a saxophone part by King Curtis (and is often mistakenly credited as the James Brown song of the same title), but she had no more chart-toppers. You can see the whole show on NBC’s Peacock streaming service; it is also available for $2.99 on Amazon; and is available for free to Hulu subscribers.
They’ve never heard anything like this before.”
You call her record ‘the greatest country album you’ve never heard.’ So what happened to it?
“‘Release Me’ was a big hit. The latter being a substandard performance and production.
Lavette Recalls
In her biography “A Woman Like Me”, Bettye Lavette recalls a “life lesson” encounter with Esther.
But in spite of her youth she was singing adult themes from the very start… and getting into adult predicaments along the way, including a drug habit that she would never fully shake.
After a year on the label she was able to get out of her contract, since she was a minor, and signed with Federal Records at the start of 1951, which was the newly formed King Records subsidiary that Syd Nathan had started in order to to lure Ralph Bass from Savoy by handing him the reins of the label.
The lead track, "Home Is Where the Hatred Is", an account of drug use written by Gil Scott-Heron, was nominated for a Grammy Award. She had never looked happier or healthier.
By 1976, Taylor was having his own financial problems and Esther moved on to produce her own albums, sadly dying in 1984.
Please accept this nomination for an amazing woman who deserved so much more and had so much to give.
How prodigious was her talent?
“ She had grown up singing in the church, but she really loved Dinah Washington and apparently would sing Dinah Washington, the great jazz singer, around the house all the time.
I mean, she sang everything.
“Esther did so many different kinds of things that, I don’t know, she never really found her niche, and we liked to classify people by niches. I used to love listening to her when I was a teenager, but I had no idea about the breadth of her music,” Hall said. I mean, she was basically taken on the road as a kid, and all of a sudden, she’s like 17 and didn’t have any friends.
Later in 1985, she was re-interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills following a fundraising led by Johnny Otis in April 1985 at the Vine St Bar & Grill.
Esther on TV!
There must be dozens of TV performances by Esther, throughout her most productive periods.
***"What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" also reached number 2 on the US Dance chart. She went to contract with Mercury records, who gave her even more control, she was to produce her own albums.
Although the Mercury albums met with some success, she didn’t quite achieve the same level of success.
Her Death
Esther died in 1984, aged just 48 from liver and kidney failure, attributed to her long-term drug abuse.
Originally buried in an unmarked pauper's grave at Lincoln Memorial Park in Compton, she was reinterred in 1985 in the Morning Light section at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, in Los Angeles.