![]() As a lead singer for the Just Come Four, her father was considered a great southern quartet singer, and Shirley Caesar's childhood was surrounded by singing and the church. The Lord is using them in their capacity, and the Lord is using me in mine."Ĭaesar was born 47 years ago in Durham, N.C., one of Big Jim Caesar's 13 children. A lot of young people I will never reach, but Amy Grant, the Clark Sisters or the Winans will reach them. The Lord has all kinds of vehicles to win souls. "I'm not saying traditional gospel music is the only music. I like songs that give a profound message. "I'm a southerner, and my roots are in traditional gospel music. "I'm a down-to-earth singer serving a modern God," she explains. She has a great rhythmic sense and improvises with excited whoops and hollers on the tag, just like Franklin at her best. She doesn't seem to need to warm up she comes blasting out from the first note, her big soprano buzzing with intensity. I couldn't then turn around and sing about those same things in a rhythm and blues song."Ĭaesar certainly has the voice to make it in pop music. I try to encourage alcoholics and dope addicts and young people committing suicide to turn to the Lord. I would find it hard to sing both R&B and gospel, because light and darkness have no fellowship. "Because I love the man I sing about, I can't sing anything but gospel. I told them I was already bought with a price, and because they didn't understand church talk, they thought they could buy my contract. They said they could make me a bigger star than Aretha Franklin or Sam Cooke. "I can't call their name, but a big record company from New York met me backstage in Birmingham and offered me $75,000. "Two or three times I've been offered rhythm and blues contracts," she says. A practicing pastor, she also runs an ambitious outreach ministry that includes a major gospel publishing house. The first black woman to win a gospel Grammy, Caesar has dominated the gospel charts for years. When Caesar plays the Warner Theatre Sunday, she'll still be under contract to the Lord. I'm under contract to Jesus Incorporated!' " I told him, 'I'm already under contract.' He said, 'I got a million dollars I'll buy your contract.' I said, 'It's not for sale. "When I was in Alabama once," she told the crowd, "a man asked me if I wanted to sing rock 'n' roll. In her long, red gown and short, tidy Afro, Caesar stalked the stage restlessly. As the song reached its feverish climax, several older women in the audience began to shout wordless exclamations and to shake uncontrollably - to "shout and fall out," as they say in the gospel world. When he laid down on the stage, Caesar pretended to hammer nails through his hands and feet. When she sang "They Crucified My Lord," one of her backup singers carried a microphone stand over his shoulder as if it were a cross. "We're going to turn this into Constitution Church tonight!" A chorus of assenting "amens" arose from the darkened seats. When Shirley Caesar came to Constitution Hall in 1982, the petite gospel singer opened up in her surprisingly big voice and told the paying customers, "This ain't no show - we're in church tonight!" Her voice assumed the rhythmic cadence of a North Carolina Pentecostal sermon, rising upward with a whoop at the end of each sentence.
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