Biography
Zola Taylor served as the pioneering woman in the timeless Platters, supplying lead and supporting vocals across landmark R&B sides that shaped the genre and infusing her colleagues’ harmonies with allure and sentiment. Born March 17, 1938, in Los Angeles, she launched her recording career as a solo artist with the 1954 RPM single “Make Love to Me.” That same year she entered the girl group Shirley Gunter & the Queens and cut several Flair releases alongside them. Producer Buck Ram, meanwhile, had formed the Platters’ initial roster to project greater refinement than typical R&B ensembles; after adjusting personnel, he locked in lead singer Tony Williams, second tenor David Lynch, baritone Paul Robi, and bass Herb Reed before adding contralto Taylor in 1955 to achieve their signature lush, ethereal blend. She also composed and fronted the uptempo “Bark, Battle and Ball,” the flip side of the group’s first Mercury single, “Only You,” which inaugurated a string of classics that included “The Great Pretender,” “My Prayer,” “Twilight Time,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
Although Williams’s velvety leads drew primary attention, Taylor proved essential to the Platters’ achievements. Known as “the Dish,” her striking appearance helped secure the group frequent Hollywood engagements, among them appearances in Rock Around the Clock and Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It. She took the lead on additional B-sides such as “He’s Mine,” “Indiff’rent,” and “My Old Flame,” and shared a 1957 duet with Lynch on the enduring doo-wop number “Goodnight, Sweetheart.” In 1959, however, the four male members were arrested during a narcotics raid; though charges were dropped, many stations refused to play their records. Williams soon departed for a solo career, and replacement Sonny Turner could not reverse the group’s declining sales.
Taylor exited the Platters in 1964 and later rejoined Lynch and Robi under the name Original Platters. She maintained that she had wed former teen idol Frankie Lymon in 1965, three years before his death from a heroin overdose. Years afterward she pursued legal claims, alongside two other women asserting widow status, over rights to his songwriting catalog; the dispute later inspired the 1998 film Why Do Fools Fall in Love?, in which Halle Berry portrayed Taylor. For an extended period she also performed as Zola Taylor’s Platters, one of numerous unofficial iterations of the group, until health issues prompted her retirement in 1996. She died in Los Angeles on April 30, 2007.
Although Williams’s velvety leads drew primary attention, Taylor proved essential to the Platters’ achievements. Known as “the Dish,” her striking appearance helped secure the group frequent Hollywood engagements, among them appearances in Rock Around the Clock and Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It. She took the lead on additional B-sides such as “He’s Mine,” “Indiff’rent,” and “My Old Flame,” and shared a 1957 duet with Lynch on the enduring doo-wop number “Goodnight, Sweetheart.” In 1959, however, the four male members were arrested during a narcotics raid; though charges were dropped, many stations refused to play their records. Williams soon departed for a solo career, and replacement Sonny Turner could not reverse the group’s declining sales.
Taylor exited the Platters in 1964 and later rejoined Lynch and Robi under the name Original Platters. She maintained that she had wed former teen idol Frankie Lymon in 1965, three years before his death from a heroin overdose. Years afterward she pursued legal claims, alongside two other women asserting widow status, over rights to his songwriting catalog; the dispute later inspired the 1998 film Why Do Fools Fall in Love?, in which Halle Berry portrayed Taylor. For an extended period she also performed as Zola Taylor’s Platters, one of numerous unofficial iterations of the group, until health issues prompted her retirement in 1996. She died in Los Angeles on April 30, 2007.