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Although the name may not
instantly ring a bell, you've heard the voice for sure. And there are plenty of places
where Jeanie Tracy's soulful sounds can be heard. During the late seventies Jeanie,
together with the Two Tons O' Fun, backed the late, great Sylvester and since then, she's
become one of the most sought-after session singers in the business. Aretha Franklin and
Patti Labelle has proclaimed her "one of the Top Ten voices in the world" and if
you ask Chaka Khan, she probably agrees.. Aretha, Chaka, Peabo Bryson, Jeffrey Osborne,
Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, Sheena Easton, Tevin Campbell, Diana Ross, Curtis Mayfield,
just to name a few, they've all benefited from her big voice. And yes, it was none other
than Jeanie Tracy you heard wailing behind Whitney Houston on "I'm Every Woman".
It's time to bring Jeanie out of the background, into the foreground. After more than
twenty years in the industry, she sure had some stories to tell!
Born in Houston, Texas, but raised in
Fresno, California, Jeanie Tracy's singing career, like so many other grand R&B
vocalists, began from an early age in the church choir. Her passion -and obvious talent-
for music led her to study opera and classical music in high-school, where she also took
piano lessons and sang in the school choir. All of which helps to explain her incredible
range and versatility. "I had a wonderful piano teacher who I call every now and then
to see how she's getting on, you know?" the warm, funny and talkative songstress told
me over the phone from her home in Oakland, California. "I haven't heard from my
choir teacher in high-school for a long time, though. I really love her. You've heard of
the Whispers? She was their teacher too. There are a lot of singers that came from her,
that she taught. The school was multi-cultural, with a good mixture of people. And she was
white. She taught us Negro Spirituals, metricals, Pop... in fact, she was the one that
took me aside and told me that I had a wonderful future. I liked a lot of Pop stuff, a lot
of everything back then, but she told me in particular that I should listen to Johnny
Mathis, who had really great diction. I met him on a plane a couple of years ago, and I
was so exited. I told him 'I listened to you' and 'I'm a huge fan of yours' and that I had
learned diction from him. He was quite pleased and it gave me a buzz, because you know,
some artists are friendly and some aren't and I found out that this artist I adored, was
really nice as a person too."
 It was
while raising money for charity (by playing keyboards with a DJ who played drums for more
than sixty-hours straight!) that Jeanie, reluctantly, landed her first professional job.
"That was really funny. It was probably when I was in college and two years into
college" Jeanie recalled. "I was doing a drum-a-thon. This guy saw me playing
keyboards and singing along at some outdoor festival and he came up to me and said 'You
sound wonderful' and asked me if I wanted to join his band. I explained to him that I
didn't know the first thing about being in a band, but he got my number anyway and about a
week later, his guitar player got sick. He came by my house, without calling, and begged:
'I really need you'. I knew that the guys in his band were much older than I and they
played jazz and blues, that kinda thing, so I told him 'I don't know how to play that
music', Jeanie said in a pretended desperate and squeaky voice, before letting out one of
her infectious laughs. "He said 'that's OK, all I need for you to do is just play
what you know to play and we'll follow you'. So I did. I played everything I knew and it
actually turned out fabulous. The band was on a 2-week notice to leave, but the club-owner
told the guy 'if you keep her, I'll extend your contract'. We were there for, like, two
years after that. I left first, because wanted to go on the road and do other
things."
Although Jeanie is best known for her
work as a session and back-up singer, she has recorded in her own right, her very first
single being "My Man Is Gone", followed by "Making New Friends" on the
small, independent Brown Door label. After moving from Fresno to San Francisco, around
1970, Jeanie took up acting and starred in Oscar Brown Jr.'s musical "Slave
Driver". "Oscar Brown is very famous in the theater world. 'Slave Driver' wasn't
the first play I was in, but it was the first thing I was cast for. I felt really honored,
because he was like the ultimate in theater, I mean, it was just like singing with Quincy
Jones, or something.. I remember Oscar telling me 'you have a wonderful voice, but you're
not singing with enough confidence. You need to take this back home and study it again'.
The next play I did was probably 'Sing Mahalia Sing' , that was my first big piece and
that was right behind Jennifer Holliday. After Jennifer left, I kinda walked in her shoes
(laughs). The next play was 'Right Mind'. That was really an undertaking because that was
my first, really big thing. It had some of the people that were in 'The Wiz'. All the big
shows out there, all the New York people... And there I was, this little California-girl,
going out, you know, in the midst of all these divas... But it was pretty cool, because
they knew who I was. Sometimes theater people can snob you, because they think 'OK, she's
a singer, but can she act?'. They have that kinda attitude, you know? It was quickly
resolved, though, once I got in and they saw that I had done a little bit of stage stuff!
(laughs). Oh, I almost forgot, I did 'Street Dreams' too, that was another New York
production."
Sometime in the mid-seventies, Jeanie
met veteran singer/songwriter/producer and industry giant Harvey Fuqua. Fuqua co-owned the
Milk & Honey labels (distributed by Fantasy Records) and Jeanie began writing and
producing for Fuqua's gospel-group, Voices of Harmony. (Jeanie is unsure of whether or not
the Voices Of Harmony's album ever was released, if anyone reading this has information in
this matter, please contact this scribe).
In 1979 Jeanie sang on the soundtrack
to Francis Ford Coppola's movie "Apocalypse Now" and soon thereafter, Harvey
Fuqua persuaded her to audition for a certain Sylvester James, who Fuqua had begun
producing two years earlier.  Sylvester's "Over and
Over", "Dance, Disco Heat" and "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real" had
earned him the "Disco-King" title and he attracted a huge following. Impressed
by what he heard, Sylvester hired Jeanie to sing both on recordings and live gigs,
together with his regular back-up vocalists: Martha Wash and Izora Armstead, also known as
the aptly titled duo Two Tons O' Fun, (later re-named the Weather Girls). Out of this
audition came some of the best dance-music ever produced on this planet, plus a strong
friendship, which lasted to Sylvester's untimely death in 1988.
"I was his biggest fan and I loved him. He was not only my boss but he was my friend
and I took care of him from the first day that he got ill, to the last day of his
life" Jeanie said with much emotion in her voice. "He was delightful, even
though he was sick, living with AIDS. He was still funny, still a character and
everything. It was great fun being with the girls: Martha (Wash) and Izora (Armstead) and
Sylvester. I wouldn't sing on the road with anyone else now anyway, but I just don't
really know... if I was gonna do it again, sing with someone back-up, who it would be
with, because I don't know anyone that could be that much fun. Sylvester was the best! We
shopped, he loved to shop! We'd dish, he loved to dish the dirt, you know?"
The first Sylvester LP
Jeanie appeared on was "Living Proof", released by Fantasy Records in 1979. The
majority of the album was recorded live at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera on March,
11 1979. Like several other Sylvester albums, "Living Proof" has been re-issued
on CD by Fantasy and listening to that particular record now, some seventeen years later,
the sheer energy emanating from Sylvester, the Two Tons O' Fun and Jeanie Tracy is just as
intense as the night it was recorded. "Oh yeah. We really turned it out!" Jeanie
said. "That was a night I'll never forget. That was the night I was introduced into
the Sylvester family. It was my first show with him and it was the most magical thing.
I've never experienced anything else like that again. You can hear it on the album, it
just comes through."
 Life
on the road with Sylvester and the Two Tons O' Fun during the heydays of Disco surely
deserves an entire book in itself. Jeanie's memory is full of hilarious stories, like the
one about Izora Armstead's habit of bringing her entire kitchen with her, wherever the
entourage went: 
"Izora used to carry her own utensils! She had a great, big trunk and there were no
clothes in there, just her pots and pans and stuff like that. When you'd go to her room,
you would smell this food coming down the hall, so you'd go:'What are you doing?' and
Izora would reply: 'come on in. girl'. Izora's the ticket! And instead of having her
clothes in the dresser, she would put food in there. There was bacon, eggs, bread and
canned foods in there!" As Jeanie went down memory lane, she laughingly recalled an
incident, where Izora Armstead once again was involved. "Miss Izora loves bingo,
still does. She almost made us late for a show one time! She had us waiting on her in a
limousine, because she was somewhere playing bingo. Sylvester was livid! Me and Martha
were already beaten. We were painted, dressed up and ready to go to the show and then,
finally, Miss Izora showed up, in some house-slippers! She had to get right in the
car!"
 1980 was a hectic year for
Jeanie. She did backgrounds on The Two Ton's O' Fun's self-titled, Harvey Fuqua-produced
debut, as well as contributing to Sylvester's next album "Sell My Soul"
(Honey/Fantasy, 1980) and the Two Tons' second LP, "Backatcha" (Honey/Fantasy,
1981). Also in 1981, Jeanie and Sylvester shared leads on "Magic Number" for
Herbie Hancock's excellent "Magic Windows" album and on Sylvester's '81-set,
"Too Hot To Sleep" (Honey/Fantasy), Jeanie's input had increased largely. (The
Two Tons O' Fun, were busy promoting their own career and consequently are missing
entirely from the sleeve notes). Jeanie is credited for supporting the backing vocals on
every, single track on "Too Hot To Sleep" and in addition, she co-wrote
"Give It Up (Don't Make Me Wait)" and duetted with Sylvester on "Here Is My
Love". For several reasons, "Too Hot To Sleep" is an atypical Sylvester
album. To most people, Sylvester equaled dance-orientated uptempo numbers, coupled with
his incredibly high, gospel-influenced falsetto, but "Too Hot To Sleep"
presented him occasionally singing in a lower register. Musically, he was clearly moving
closer towards R&B, a transition Jeanie certainly played a big part in.
"That's what I wanted to bring to Sylvester's fans," she confirmed. "When
we did the song 'Here Are My Gloves', that's what we called 'Here Is My Love', he wanted
to sing high and I encouraged him to sing low. I said to him 'I know you love to be this
Disco-queen, but you need to show people that there's so much more to you'. Sylvester said
'Oh girl..' I told him 'we can't be two women here! You have to be the man!'. So I
encouraged him to sing low. That (Too Hot To Sleep) was one of my favorite albums. I loved
all of his stuff, but that was my favorite album, because he did sing low. He went into
another direction. You know, when I listen to Prince, I know that Prince must have
listened to Sylvester, because there are times when Prince sounds just like Sylvester..
You know how Sylvester used to go down in that low voice and go up in his high register...
It's not a bad thing, though. It's good."
1982 saw the release of Jeanie's first
album in her own right, "Me And You", which came out on Fantasy and was produced
by Harvey Fuqua. Apart from one Disco track, the majority of the LP was a rather mellow,
but nice R&B affair. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't aimed directly towards at the
club-going audience. "We didn't know what direction to go in, so we just did a little
of everything," Jeanie said. "There were some beautiful mid-tempo songs on there
that I really liked and basically I've always wanted to be a balladeer. The Dance music I
love, but I also want to be known as being able to do really good R&B, so hopefully
that will happen in the future. Don't get me wrong, I really love House music. It still
has that energy that no other music has. R&B ballads have a certain intensity, but
House or dance music has a special feeling, it puts you in a certain mood. When I come out
on the stage and that music starts a-pumping, people get energized, I get energized. It's
a wonderful feeling."
As laid-back as the majority of the
material on Jeanie's first album was, it also spawned the lady's funkiest single to date;
the irresistible "I'm Your Jeanie", where the tables were turned and Sylvester,
in his low voice, was featured on background vocals. When reminded of it, Jeanie roared
with laughter. "OHHH! Golly! 'I'm your Jeanie, come and free me', I wrote that! Yeah,
'let me funk with your emotions'...You remember that song Sylvester had out, 'Do You Wanna
Funk' ? He got the idea for it from my 'I'm Your Jeanie' song. He was so thrilled. He
asked me: 'who wrote that let-me-funk-with-your-emotions line?'. I told him I did and he
said 'ooh, girl. That's clever! That's brilliant!' and he went and wrote 'Do You Wanna
Funk'. It was a massive hit and I used to tease him about it, saying 'you owe me!'."
 For
"Do You Wanna Funk", included on the 1982 album "All I Need",
Sylvester had changed labels, from Fantasy to Megatone, a San Francisco-based company. The
move also marked a return to Dance-music for Sylvester and as he became increasingly
popular on the high-energy scene, Jeanie followed suit and signed with Megatone too. She
backed Sylvester on his "Call Me" (1983) and "M-1015" (1984) LP's and
released a couple of hi-energy twelve inches of her own, such as a high-energy version of
Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way". In 1985, Jeanie recorded a duet
"You Are My Love" with the School Boys and following year, sang with Sylvester
on what was to be last album: "Mutual Attraction".
Jeanie found more and more session work
and backed Jeffrey Osborne and Narada Michael Walden, amongst others, but even so, the
late eighties was not the best period in Jeanie's life.
"I got stuck in that hi-energy mold" Jeanie explained. "That was really the
kind of label Megatone was. I was trying to go into another direction, because music
started shaping different again. I still had a big dance-following, even though the stuff
wasn't played on the radio and I was still working a lot in the clubs. It was just hard to
get out of that hi-energy mold. Finally, I said to myself 'enough is enough, this is going
nowhere'. Plus Sylvester had died, my manager passed away right after that, the president
of Megatone died.. Music got to be no fun to me for a minute. That part of it, the
recording. I still loved music, but getting stuck there and everybody just passing away...
There seemed to be no end. I just needed to put that aside until I found where it could be
fun again. Music as I knew it had sort of taken a back seat during this time. I saw where
the music was going and it really didn't interest me. Then all these people were dying in
my life and I went into a slump that I just couldn't shake."
Understandably, Jeanie decided to put
her recording career on the shelf, in favor of theater, session work and singing
commercials. "Theater was really another extension for me, where I could do another
character and have fun with it. I did a lot of theater and session work, that I love, plus
I was quite busy doing commercials. I got really interested in that and I had about nine
or ten TV-commercials out at one time. It was good money, so I really didn't think about
doing anything for myself, for my sole satisfaction. It kinda got to the point where a
friend of mine said to me that it was awful. She said: 'I think it's terrible and selfish
what you do. What are you doing to your friends and fans? We wanna be able to go to the
store and buy your new product and we can't do that. We have to sit by the TV and watch
the commercials and have guessing games: 'I wonder if that's Jeanie singing or not?'.
Jeanie chuckled and admitted that she at first had been very upset with this friend's
nerve, before realizing the person had a point. "I thought about it and she was
right, I mean, I have this talent, I have this gift and who am I to take it away if you
all still wanna receive it? "
It was on the plane to San Diego, where
she was scheduled to do a show with producer, songwriter and dance-artist Ernest Kohl ,
that the first step in Jeanie's come-back took place. Ernest tried to persuade Jeanie to
let him produce her and after hearing material that Kohl and his partner Steve Skinner had
done for another dance-artist, Jeanie decided to invest the time and money necessary.
" I called and said to them: 'just send the track and I'll write the words to it'.
That's how I wrote 'It's My Time'. At that time, I was really tired of the way things were
going for me, musically," Jeanie said and cited the lyrics to explain what her
feelings were: "'It's my time to live again, it's my time to stand up and shout'. I'm
moving on, that's what the song is about."
 Jeanie flew to
New York to work with her old friend, Martha Wash, and while she was there, took some time
off and recorded "It's My Time" with Skinner and Kohl. The single was picked up
by 3-Beat Records in the U.K. and about a year after its release on 3-Beat, another
U.K.-based dance-label showed interest. Pulse-8 wanted an entire album and in 1994, Jeanie
went to London and spent some fifteen weeks in the studio, working with the
remix/production and song writing team Band Of Gypsies (Tim Cox and Nigel Swanston), the
guys behind Rozalla. The uptempo number "Do You Believe In The Wonder"and
"If This Is Love" were issued as singles in '94 and in early '95 "It's My
Time" was remixed and re-released . The album, also entitled "It's My Time"
came out towards the end of 1995, followed by two more singles, the first being a cover of
the James Brown classic "It's A Man's Man's World", where Jeanie and Bobby
Womack (!) shared the microphone. "We had a wonderful time, doing that song. The Band
Of Gypsies suggested I'd cover 'It's A Man's Man's World' and they thought it would be
great to do it like a duet with Bobby. I thought so too and since I had opened for Bobby
back in the eighties and still had his number, I gave him a call and he remembered me! It
was a thrill to work with him."
The last single lifted from the
album,"Crying In My Sleep", was one of the few ballads on the album, where
Jeanie really had a chance to belt out. Is it a coincidence that so many of the finest
vocalists from the sixties and seventies, the individuals with the most personal and
soulful voices, have either left R&B altogether or are active on the Dance music
scene?
"No, it's not surprising to me that people like Martha Wash, Loleatta Holloway and
people like that are doing House music, because R&B has gone to a place where I really
don't wanna go," the frank Jeanie replied. "Now, everybody sounds alike, there's
no diversity..Even the women sound like the men. I don't know what the companies are
doing, but it's not a good thing to me. Used to be, like ten years ago, if you took an
artist and they sounded like someone, they couldn't get a deal: 'Oh, you sound too much
like Anita Baker, there's already an Anita Baker out there. ' Now, if you sound like Jodeci, Boys II Men or Mary J. Blige, it's good
thing and you get signed right away. So, in ten years, what's the music gonna sound
like?", Jeanie chuckled. "And everybody's re-doing old classics. Nobody's making
new music, except Babyface and maybe a couple of others. Me and Bobby Womack was talking
about that. They took a song of his and made a great, big, huge hit out of it a couple of
years ago and I wondered why they didn't get Bobby to sing it. Instead they had one of the
boys from Jodeci and I asked Bobby how he felt about it. He said 'well, they could have
asked me, since they had him singing it just like me anyway'. "
 Since the
release of her sophomore album in 1995, Jeanie's been singing on tons of commercials and
countless sessions, including Curtis Mayfield, Puff Johnson, Michael Bolton, Grover
Washington, Tevin Campbell, Kenny Loggins, Natalie Cole and ex-Take That singer Gary
Barlow. Jeanie -who's stated that she likes to do a little bit of everything- is on the
verge of branching out into a completely new line of work. "Yes, I'm getting ready to
do a television series. It's called 'Kangarate' and it's an animated thing. We'll start
shooting it in August. I'm very excited about it, because I've been wanting to do more
television things. I wanna do a sitcom and that's what I'm getting myself geared to, more
television work. Somebody recommended me, they thought that my voice would be great for
doing this part and for singing the theme song for the show. The show is about a kangaroo
that does martial arts, but it's not violent , it's about respect. I'll be singing the
(Aretha Franklin) song 'Respect' and do the voice of the snake, who's called 'Bantu'. The
snake is the kangaroo's friend and is supposed to be real sassy and I'm really exited
about it, as you can hear. Anyway, I'll be playing the part of a little snake, Mickey
Thomas from Jefferson Starship, he has an incredible, incredible voice, he'll be doing the
voice of the kangaroo and the guy, Pat Morita, 'Miyagi', from the movie 'Karate Kid' is
gonna be in there too."
In the spring of '97, Jeanie went back
to the U.K. (where her last album was cut) to work with British Dance music producer Paul
"Wand" Masterson, the man behind the 1995 club classic "Let's Whip It Up
(You Go Girl)" by Sleazesisters With Vicki Shepard, who just happens to be a very
good friend of Jeanie's. Under the "Wand" moniker, Paul and Jeanie's first
effort "Happiness", was released on the DeConstruction label, but unfortunately
came out in the U.K. when Princess Diana had just died in that horrible car accident.
Perhaps the song's positive message "Sometimes in life, things get you down, I need a
release, I need a release from the pressure, happiness" didn't fit in too well with
the current mood. In any case, it sadly went pretty much unnoticed. Another track Jeanie
penned with Paul Masterson, "Into Tomorrow", was released on 3-Beat/BMG, home of
Jeanie's last album "It's My Time". In 1998, no longer signed with Pulse 8,
Jeanie re-united with the "It's My Time" album's team of producers, the Band of
Gypsies, for a single entitled "Answer My Prayer". In the spring of that year,
the first 13 episodes of "Kangarate" starting airing on P.B.S.
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