gospel singer
Personal Information
Born August 27, 1961, in Houston, TX; oldest of six children; married Tim Crawford, 1997.
Education: Received teaching degree and certification in Texas.
Career
Gospel music recording artist, 1987--. Joined Southeast Inspirational Choir, mid-1970s; featured soloist on song, "My Liberty," 1980. Attracted attention of gospel producer Thomas Whitfield, 1986; released Just As I Am, 1987. Signed with Tribute Records, 1990. Released top-selling gospel albums Through the Storm, 1991; Save the World, 1993; More Than a Melody, 1995; Yolanda ... Live in Washington, 1996. Performed at White House Christmas celebration, 1995.
Life's Work
"I've always believed you should appeal to everybody," Yolanda Adams once told Metro magazine interviewer Nicky Baxter. One of the central participants in a gospel music revolution that has brought pop sounds into the style and expanded the music's market in dollar terms from roughly $160 million in 1987 to $550 million in 1996, Adams may also be gospel music's best bridge-builder. Easily able to handle modern styles ranging from jazz to mainstream urban contemporary to hip-hop, she found convincing ways, musically and lyrically, of combining these styles with explicitly religious expression. And her voice seems solidly rooted in the black church and in traditional gospel music. "Never underestimate where I'm going, because just when you think I'm going off the deep end into the jazz thing, I might come right back and shock you with stone traditional {music}," she told Baxter in Metro magazine.
A native of Houston, Adams was born on August 27, 1961. She is the oldest of six siblings. Her family offered her a solidly religious upbringing, and as a small child she created for herself an imaginary friend she called "Hallelujah" and sang a solo in church at age three. She grew up with the classic gospel sounds of James Cleveland and the Edwin Hawkins Singers, but hers was also a musically eclectic household. Adams's mother, a pianist who majored in music in college, introduced her daughter to jazz, classical music, and secular R&B. Adams joined a gospel choir, the Southeast Inspirational Choir, shortly after her father's death when she was 13.
A six-foot-one-inch beauty, Adams hoped to become a fashion model even as she embarked on a career as an elementary school teacher. "I always sang gospel music, but the career of gospel music was not a priority," she told Shirley Henderson of the Chicago Tribune. Nevertheless, her powerful voice propelled her to the forefront of the Southeast Inspirational Choir's performances; she took a solo on the choir's 1980 hit "My Liberty." In 1986 well-known gospel producer, composer, and pianist Thomas Whitfield heard the choir and wasted no time in approaching Adams. Adams remembered him saying "I've got to record you," in the Chicago Tribune. The result was the album Just as I Am, released in 1987 on Sound of Gospel Records.
Adams signed with the growing Tribute label in 1990, and between 1990 and 1997 released four successful albums, all of which won Stellar awards, a prestigious gospel music industry honor. Albums Through the Storm and Save the World produced pieces that Adams still sings in concert, such as "The Battle Is the Lord's," but it was 1995's More Than a Melody that really put Adams on the pop- music radar screen and moved her style sharply in the direction of secular urban contemporary music. The album was honored with a Soul Train Lady of Soul award and a Grammy award nomination, and 1996's Yolanda ... Live in Washington also earned the singer a Grammy nomination.
More Than a Melody showcased the vocal versatility that was the key to Adams's growing success. The album reflected a wide variety of musical influences: "The Good Shepherd" was a jazz piece that showed traces of the music of jazz diva Nancy Wilson and jazz-pop keyboard styles; "Gotta Have Love" contained a strong element of rap; "What About the Children" was a rhapsodic inspirational piece written especially for Adams by Detroit composer BeBe Winans. "Fly Like an Eagle," a remake of Steve Miller's 1976 hit, also seemed influenced by rap, that is, rap music's tendency to take a past hit and make its melody and lyrics serve a new use. "Fly Like an Eagle" and "Gotta Have Love" garnered Adams airplay on urban contemporary and jazz radio stations.
Unlike some contemporary Christian musicians--black and white--who consciously blurred the line between sacred and secular music and described religious feeling with romantic terms such as love and commitment, Adams left no doubt in her songs as to the import of her religious message. Even "Gotta Have Love," her most radical piece, alludes directly to Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians: "Now abide in these: faith hope, and charity/ And the greatest of these three has set me free!" Taking an active hand in both songwriting and production, Adams created innovative fusions that added traditional elements to contemporary settings or convincingly attached religious lyrics to secular song forms. Her voice showed the influence of secular singers Anita Baker, Whitney Houston, and Nancy Wilson, yet still maintained overtones of the church. "Gospel," Adams told the Chicago Tribune, "is any song that speaks to the good news of God."
Adams was also in the forefront of redefining gospel's visual image. Clad on the cover of More Than a Melody in a spectacular purple crepe blouse and high-fashion olive-green scarf, Adams harked back to her fashion-model days and challenged the preconceptions of those who, in the words of Essence magazine's Deborah Gregory, "still think gospel means big hats and hymns on Sunday." "{Audiences} love it when you don't look like your basic gospel singer in sequins," Adams told Gregory. "I'm definitely into a couture look," she added.
In the years following the release of More Than a Melody, honors and opportunities have flowed Adams's way with increasing regularity. She performed on the 1996 Soul Train Music Awards, the 1997 Essence Awards, BET's Teen Summit, and the Tonight Show. A special thrill was a performance during the Christmas festivities at the White House in 1995. Adams appeared in a television commercial for the Office Depot retail chain and was named a national spokesperson for the FILA Corporation's Operation Rebound youth outreach program, a post that often takes her on the road to speak with students in inner-city schools. The former elementary school teacher often addresses the situation of children and young people in today's society.
As the late 1990s approached, Adams's reputation seemed certain to continue to rise. In 1997 she was featured in the 50-city Tour of Life organized and headed by contemporary-gospel sensation Kirk Franklin. That same year, she married stockbroker and former New York Jets football player Tim Crawford in a lavish ceremony at Houston's First Presbyterian Church, and she enrolled in the prestigious divinity program at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Her voice is still gaining in strength and depth, and gospel and secular audiences eagerly await her future releases.
Awards
All four albums on Tribute label received gospel-industry Stellar awards; Soul Train Music Award of Best Gospel Album for More Than a Melody; Dove Gospel Music awards; Grammy award nominations for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album for Save the World and Yolanda ... Live in Washington.
Works
Selective Discography
- Yolanda ... Live in Washington, Tribute, 1996.
- More Than a Melody, Tribute, 1995.
- Save the World, Tribute, 1993.
- Through the Storm, Tribute, 1991.
- Just as I Am, Sound of Gospel, 1987.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Billboard, August 2, 1997.
- Chicago Tribune, December 24, 1995.
- Essence, February 1996.
- Jet, October 20, 1997.
- Metro Magazine (Silicon Valley, California), March 21, 1996.
- USA Today, January 15, 1997.
- Additional information for this entry was provided by a press biography issued by Mahogany Entertainment.
— James M. Manheim
