singer; pianist
Personal Information
Born in Seattle; moved to Yakima, WA, at age 11; married John Cushon, 1994.
Religion: Raised Baptist, currently Methodist.
Career
Trained as a pianist and singer in childhood; led church choirs by age 11; recorded demo in Los Angeles, 1970s; performed as nighclub singer in Kansas City area, late 1970s-late 1980s; recorded with Tears for Fears, 1987; signed to Fontana label, 1990; released debut album Circle of One, 1990; released Evolution, 1993; Moving On, 1995; Come Walk with Me, 1997.
Life's Work
After struggling for over a decade as a nightclub singer in and around Kansas City, Oleta Adams captured America's musical heart during the 1991 Gulf War with her top five hit "Get Here." A versatile talent with classical training, Adams honed her craft during her long apprenticeship and gained respect over the 1990s as a musician's musician, as a star who had climbed to the top through sheer talent rather than through her appearance or command of the skills of marketing.
Adams was born in Seattle (the date is uncertain), but moved with her family to the predominantly white inland city of Yakima when she was in the sixth grade. At a very young age she attracted attention for both her singing and her piano playing, and she was soon drafted into the choir at the Baptist church where her father was minister. By the time she was 11, she was directing or accompanying four separate choirs. Adams told David Ritz in an Essence interview, "That's when I really went to work," she recalled, "and haven't stopped since."
Having taken piano lessons as a youngster, Adams turned to vocal studies in junior high, working with a classically-trained teacher named Lee Farrell who steered Adams in the direction of opera. For a time, Adams considered an operatic career, even winning a scholarship to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, but chose not to enroll. Farrell, who continued to play a role in Adams's career through the 1990s, suggested that Adams might be more successful if she stuck with her natural voice and with the soul, jazz, and gospel music that had shaped it.
Adams headed for Los Angeles in the early 1970s with dreams of stardom. She spent $5,000 on a demo tape, but found that her quiet, artful vocal style was ill-suited to the demands of the rising style of the moment--disco music, which prized flamboyance, extroversion, and a studio-oriented (as opposed to live- performance-oriented) musicality. Again with Farrell's help, Adams undertook a more modest sort of musical career--she moved to Kansas City and quickly made a name for herself singing R&B, jazz, and pop in the city's nightclubs and lounges. It was "very local but very steady," she recalled to Ritz. Adams rose to the top of the local scene, at one point publicizing her efforts through a large billboard.
The life of a barroom musician is always a difficult one. "You work through anything," Adams told the Sacramento Bee, "the blender, the waitresses, groups from conventions coming through, even people falling over you drunk." Adams continued to dream of a record contract. She made another demo in 1980, working with drummer John Cushon and gaining in the process not only a band member but also a life partner--the two married in 1994. Her talents were recognized by several celebrities who passed through Kansas City. The rock group Yes arranged an audition for Adams with Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegun, and jazz-pop musician George Benson tried for several years to land her a record deal. Adams was "discovered," but success eluded her.
In 1985 Adams caught the attention of yet another top-echelon act: the British duo of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, who comprised the group Tears for Fears, saw her perform at Kansas City's Hyatt Regency hotel. Unlike some of the other stars Adams had met, this duo did not make their presence known to her, although they had been very moved by her music. The following year, Adams's life hit a particularly disillusioning stretch; she was forced to break up her band, experienced problems in her relationship with Cushon, and began to despair of ever making a life for herself in music. It was at this point that Adams returned to her Christian religious roots. "I gave my life to Christ, and it was like a big weight coming off my shoulders," Adams told Lynn Norment of Ebony.
Not long after that, Orzabal and Smith began work on the Tears for Fears album The Seeds of Love. Like much British pop of the day, the duo's work incorporated elements of American soul music, and they placed a trans-Atlantic phone call to the vocalist they had heard in Kansas City. Adams sang backup on the album, toured Europe with the band, and soon saw her dream come true as she landed a record deal with the Fontana label. Her album Circle of One, with Orzabal as producer and dedicated to Lee Farrell, was recorded in London and soon released in the United States.
The release of Adams's single "Get Here" coincided with the 1991 Gulf War, which saw large numbers of U.S. soldiers deployed in the unfamiliar and at the time frightening desert terrain of Kuwait and Iraq. With its refrain of "I don't care how you get here, get here if you can" and its evocation of passion and separation, the Brenda Russell composition became for some listeners a wartime anthem, eventually putting Adams in the pop top five. "Get Here" brought Adams to a level where her immediate future was assured, and remains her best-known recording. The album, she recalled to Ritz, eventually sold over one million copies.
Circle of One and its two successors, 1993's Evolution and 1995's Moving On, mixed pop, jazz, and R&B elements. Adams has been difficult to categorize stylistically, a quality that at times has hampered her acceptance among format-policing radio programmers, but that has won her raves from discerning listeners impressed with her versatility. She has cited as vocal influences the classic soul stylists Aretha Franklin and Donny Hathaway. The low, smooth vocal ornamentation of Anita Baker's singing also may have influenced Adams; Baker's early producer and songwriter Michael Powell contributed to Moving On. The elegant interplay of voice and piano in Adams's music also recalls the 1980s work of Patrice Rushen, although that artist had a more pop-oriented style overall.
Adams emerges in interviews as an articulate, wry observer of the music industry and of her own career. She told Norment that she was glad to have been "tenderized" by her long years of nightclub singing. Returning to her pre-nightclub roots, she released the gospel album Come Walk with Me in 1997 (the album earned Adams a Grammy nomination) and planned a secular release for 1998. Adams has not regained the commercial heights of "Get Here," but she is a solidly respected performer with a strong following both in the United States and in Europe, where her stardom began. "I'm not major major," Adams admitted to the Boston Globe. "But the respect is there, and that's very important to me. I'm not starving. I still have a place to sing, and I figure that's what it's all about."
Awards
Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album, 1997.
Works
Selective Discography
- Circle of One, Fontana, 1990.
- Evolution, Fontana, 1993.
- Moving On, Fontana, 1995.
- Come Walk with Me, Harmony, 1997.
Further Reading
Books
- Contemporary Musicians, volume 17, Gale Research, 1997.
- BET Weekend, June 1997, p. 26.
- Billboard, June 21, 1997, p. 42.
- Boston Globe, August 16, 1996, p. D15; August 1996, p. 84.
- Essence, June 1991, p. 34; January 1994, p. 44.
- Sacramento Bee, July 19, 1996, p TK14.
— James M. Manheim
