Linda Clifford

Emerging from Brooklyn, Linda Clifford drew on her jazz roots, powerful vocals, and bold attitude to reach prominence in disco and R&B/urban contemporary circles throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Once crowned Miss New York State, she performed with the Jerico Jazz Singers and fronted her own trio during the 1960s before turning toward R&B and pop. After attracting modest attention on Paramount, she joined Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom roster. In 1978 Clifford scored her breakthrough with “Runaway Love,” which climbed to number three on the R&B charts. That same year the highly stylized “If My Friends Could See Me Now” became a staple in clubs. Her follow-up success arrived in 1979 as the soulful duet with Mayfield, “Between You Baby and Me,” which reached number 14. Throughout the 1980s she continued sessions for RSO, Capitol, and Red Label yet never regained earlier commercial ground. In the early 1990s she cut several tracks under Rick Gianatos’s production, though no label ultimately issued the material.