Blinky

Sondra "Blinky" Williams secured her lasting place in music history in 1974 by delivering the memorable theme song for the trailblazing sitcom Good Times, although her accomplishments as a gospel and soul performer stretched back many years earlier. Before using that nickname she issued the solo album Hark the Angels in 1967; the church-raised vocalist then joined Motown and issued several secular singles plus the 1969 duets album Just We Two with Edwin Starr, while also appearing on the Lady Sings the Blues soundtrack that topped the Billboard 200 in 1972. Most of her Motown material stayed in the vaults until Real Gone Music assembled the 2019 anthology Heart Full of Soul: The Motown Anthology, a thorough collection that presents the complete previously unreleased album Sunny and Warm.

Raised in Los Angeles after her birth in Oakland, Sondra Williams built her reputation in the mid-'60s both as a solo act and as a member of the Cogics, the gospel group headed by Andraé Crouch that also included Edna Wright, Gloria Jones, and Billy Preston. She made her solo bow on Vee Jay in 1964 with a recording of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," whose B-side prompted the nickname "Miss Heartaches." Atlantic released her full-length Hark the Voice three years later as an entry in its Religious Series; Williams herself arranged the traditional selections while Crouch supplied several original pieces.

Williams remained inside the Motown organization for six years. Recording gritty R&B under the name Blinky, she began with the 1968 single "I Wouldn't Change the Man He Is"/"I'll Always Love You," collaborating with Ashford & Simpson, Ed Cobb, and Hal Davis. She and Edwin Starr, fresh from his first Top Ten pop success with "Twenty-Five Miles," next delivered the Frank Wilson-produced Just We Two on the Gordy subsidiary in 1969. Only a limited portion of her later Motown output appeared during her tenure there: versions of "Money (That's What I Want)" and "For Your Precious Love" formed a 1972 MoWest single, and her final release on the main label, the Clay McMurray-produced "You Get a Tangle in Your Lifeline"/"This Man of Mine," arrived in 1973. She also sang "T'ain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do" for the Lady Sings the Blues soundtrack, a chart-topping album. By the time she and the label parted company, Motown had abandoned plans for at least three Blinky LPs, among them the projected sets Sunny and Warm and Softly.

Right after leaving Motown, Williams issued a single on Reprise and, more prominently, performed the Good Times theme in tandem with Jim Gilstrap. She later returned to gospel and session work, including further recordings with Andraé Crouch. Over subsequent decades most of her issued and unreleased Motown tracks surfaced on the compilations Cellarful of Motown (volumes two, three, and four), The Complete Motown Singles (volumes eight, nine, ten, and 12A), and Motown Unreleased. The most extensive overview came with Real Gone Music's two-disc Heart Full of Soul: The Motown Anthology in 2019, which contained the entire Sunny and Warm album plus more than thirty additional tracks.