Kate Hart

Award-winning blues singer Kathleen Hart entered the world and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Private instructors such as Jane Lambert and Jerry Gray guided her studies across multiple years. While still enrolled in high school she launched her performing career. At eighteen she secured professional employment inside the heavy metal outfit Raw Flesh and simultaneously departed Detroit for Chicago. For an extended stretch she recorded and toured as Kathy Hart before eventually adopting the concise stage name Kate Hart.

Her first single, “Syncopated Love,” reached listeners in 1972 and registered as a hit. The debut album Tonight I Want It All did not appear until 1990, issued by Biograph Records. Nominations and honors arrived the next year in rapid succession, including recognition for Best Blues Album, Entertainer of the Year, Best Blues Recording, Best Female Blues Artist, Vocalist of the Year, Best Female Blues Singer, and additional categories. A Grammy Award nomination arrived at a later date. Across more than two decades in the business the accumulated trophies proved numerous enough to occupy most of the shelving inside her residence.

Hart has shared stages and sessions with many musicians, among them guitarists Nick Vigarino and Linda Rhyne, drummer Bill Brammer, bassist Alex Dore, saxophonist Sue Orfield, and vocalists Nancy Claire, Peaches, Patti Allen, and Kathi McDonald. She has also assembled her own groups, among them Bluestars and Signatures.

Queen of the Night reached stores in 2000 and contained the tracks “It Seemed Like Such a Good Idea at the Time,” “Ain’t Gonna Cry No More,” and “Blue Reverie.” During that same year she introduced the rock-performing alter ego Lucy Mongrel.