Dorinda Clark-Cole

Dorinda Clark-Cole has earned recognition as a Grammy-winning gospel performer, composer, instrumentalist, and talk-show host chiefly through her longstanding membership in the contemporary gospel group The Clark Sisters. Within that family ensemble she played a key role in shaping the group’s signature vocal blend, a layered harmonic texture whose reach extended to numerous artists working in R&B, pop, and hip-hop. Her first solo project, the self-titled album issued in 2002 on Gospo Centric, contained the popular track “I’m Coming Out,” after which she maintained steady visibility on gospel charts with the well-received releases Take It Back in 2008 and Living It in 2015 while also appearing on successful recordings by Kirk Franklin and VaShawn Mitchell. Nearly ten years after her previous solo outing she returned with the single “Great and Mighty” in 2023.

She entered the world as Dorinda Grace Clark in Detroit, Michigan, in 1957. At age five she began performing on the church platform, and together with siblings Jacky Clark-Chisholm, Elbertina “Twinkie” Clark, and Karen Clark-Sheard she acquired her musical skills under the rigorous guidance of her mother, the esteemed church musician Mattie Moss Clark. Known for her exacting standards, Moss Clark required her daughters to rehearse extensively and perform frequent Sunday features rather than simply joining the regular choir, a discipline that ultimately propelled the Clark Sisters to prominence as a major act in the early 1970s.

Within the quartet Clark-Cole became identified as the “jazzy one,” a mezzo-soprano distinguished by her command of ascending runs, scat passages, and ornamental riffs. Her distinctive rasp took center stage on the funk-driven “Overdose of the Holy Ghost,” the B-side of the group’s landmark single “You Brought the Sunshine,” during the Clark Sisters’ commercial peak in the 1980s. She remained with the ensemble after Twinkie departed for a solo career in the early 1990s, yet turned greater attention elsewhere once the quartet’s visibility declined by the mid-decade. At that point she increased her involvement in preaching and pastoral work within the Church of God in Christ, where she assumed both regional and national posts related to administration and music ministry.

Following the example set by Twinkie and Karen, Clark-Cole launched her solo career in 2002 with the Gospo Centric release that produced the hits “I’m Coming Out” and “I’m Still Here.” A live recording titled The Rose of Gospel appeared in 2005, followed by the studio album Take It Back in 2008. Although those projects earned her two Stellar Awards and a Soul Train Lady of Soul trophy, it was the 2006 Clark Sisters reunion album Live: One Last Time that brought her first pair of Grammy Awards. Her fourth solo album, I Survived, reached number three on the Billboard gospel chart in 2011, and four years later Living It climbed to number two while earning a Grammy nomination for Best Gospel Album. Drawing on a season of personal challenge, she issued the single “Great and Mighty” in 2023; the following year the Clark Sisters received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award.