Freda Payne

The versatile Freda Payne built her primary reputation through singing, though she also took on roles in stage musicals and feature films across several decades while briefly fronting a syndicated talk program. Born Freda Charcilia Payne on September 19, 1942, in Detroit, Michigan, she absorbed jazz early through the voices of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Billie Holiday. Radio jingles provided her first professional outlet and quickly drew notice from industry figures; Berry Gordy, Jr. sought to place her on the fledgling Motown roster, and Duke Ellington featured her for two nights in Pittsburgh with his orchestra before extending a ten-year contract. Payne’s mother declined both offers.

Throughout the early and middle 1960s she worked as a jazz singer, traveling with Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby and releasing the 1963 big-band collection After the Lights Go Down Low and Much More!. A second album, How Do You Say I Don’t Love You Anymore, appeared three years later. National television exposure followed on programs hosted by Johnny Carson, David Frost, and Merv Griffin. Her commercial breakthrough arrived after she joined the Invictus label in 1969, founded by Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland. The resulting album Band of Gold yielded the title track, which reached number three on the U.S. charts and topped the U.K. chart in 1970.

Although no later single matched that peak, Payne scored additional early-1970s successes with “Deeper and Deeper,” “Cherish What’s Dear to You,” “You Brought the Joy,” and the Vietnam-era protest song “Bring the Boys Home.” Further LPs issued during the decade—Contact, Reaching Out, Payne & Pleasure, Out of Payne Comes Love, Stares & Whispers, Supernatural High, and Hot—failed to register on the charts. In 1981 she shifted focus to television, hosting the short-lived program Today’s Black Woman.

The 1990s brought a return to recording with An Evening with Freda Payne and Christmas with Freda & Friends, alongside film parts in Private Obsession, Sprung, and Ragdoll. Into the new century she continued balancing both fields, appearing in the Eddie Murphy comedy Nutty Professor II: The Klumps and the television film Fire & Ice while issuing the 2001 album Come See About Me. Retrospective collections such as Band of Gold: The Best of Freda Payne, Unhooked Generation: The Complete Invictus Recordings, and The Best of Freda Payne: Ten Best Series also surfaced. Impulse reissued After the Lights Go Down Low in 2005 without additional tracks. Payne next delivered the intimate 2007 set On the Inside. She resurfaced publicly in 2009 with a performance of her signature song on American Idol. In June 2014 she released the jazz-oriented studio album Come Back to Me Love.