Millie Jackson

One evening at the storied Smalls Paradise nightclub, Millie Jackson experienced her initial moment singing before listeners after heckling the woman onstage from her table with companions. Challenged to perform better, she took the stage and delivered Ben E. King's "Don't Play It No More." Within two weeks she received an offer for another engagement, though without compensation. Tony Rice soon escorted her to a Hoboken, NJ, spot and later to Brooklyn, NY, where she appeared for a modest sum.

Born in Thompson, GA, Jackson resided with her grandmother until relocating in 1958 to Newark, NJ, to join her father. Her developing musical tastes drew from Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and eventually the O'Jays. Her debut charting release arrived in 1971 with the misleadingly named "A Child of God (It's Hard to Believe)," widely assumed to be gospel material. Heated lyrics prompted its withdrawal, yet it still climbed to number 22 on the R&B charts. By spring 1972 she scored her first R&B Top Ten entry via "Ask Me What You Want." Nightclub dates kept her schedule full, and August brought a second straight Top Ten placement with "My Man, A Sweet Man," which reached number seven—though the track was never among her personal favorites. A year afterward, the vocalist whose timbre echoed that of her idol Gladys Knight achieved a third Top Ten hit with the mid-tempo "Hurts So Good." The single rose to number three R&B and crossed into the pop Top 40, supplied the title for her album, and appeared on the Cleopatra Jones film soundtrack. Brad Shapiro collaborated with Jackson on production, yet she received acknowledgment solely for the album concept. In her words, "...that's when they (label owners) met the real Millie Jackson." Full credit for her contributions followed.

January 1975 brought the album Caught Up, which unveiled the racy, raunchy spoken interludes that would define her signature style and delight audiences. The lead track "If Loving You Is Wrong I Don't Want to Be Right" earned her two Grammy nominations. Jackson has stated she never took vocal lessons and never believed she could sing; consequently she began inserting candid, blunt talk—then commonly called rap—into her recordings to offset that perceived limitation. This approach yielded a fourth Top Ten single with country artist Merle Haggard's "If You're Not Back in Love by Monday" (Billboard country charts number two), her own rendition reaching number five R&B. Over the ensuing decade she placed numerous singles inside the Top 100 for Spring Records. Signing with Jive in 1986, she added fifth and sixth Top Ten entries: "Hot! Wild! Unrestricted! Crazy Love" and "Love Is a Dangerous Game," which peaked at numbers nine and six on the R&B charts, respectively. Beyond recording, Jackson authored the play Young Man, Older Woman, which toured for four years. Her focus has since shifted to radio, where she hosts an afternoon program in Dallas, TX. Billboard ranks her among the foremost R&B performers ever to cut records or grace a stage, and she continues satisfying audiences both as a broadcaster and live entertainer.