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Ann Peebles was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 27, 1947. She came into this world as number seven in what would be a sibling crew of eleven (!). The digit seven had a special meaning to her mother and father. "When I was growing up, my parents always told me that the Bible says that the seventh will be wise or silly. So I chose to be wise", Ann laughed over the Trans-Atlantic phone line. She was about five when she understood that she was blessed with a beautiful voice. "I remember that I did a talent show in school. It was not a contest, it was to raise money for the school, and that's when I discovered 'Hey! I can sing'. My dad taught me 'Will The Circle Be Unbroken' to sing at the talent show and that's when I really heard myself for the first time."

Ann's father, Perry Peebles, was a minister of music at the First Baptist Church in St. Louis and the director of the Peebles Choir, which Ann joined when she was nine years old. "The whole family was in the Peebles Choir. Cousins, nephews, nieces, we were all raised up singing in the choir. My dad's father was the founder of the choir, so our grandfather had raised his children in the Peebles Choir. Then our family came along and we did a lot of things with people like Mahalia Jackson and all those great artists, back when I was a little girl. Both my parents sang and my dad played the piano and guitar. My mother didn't really play anything, but she had the greatest voice. She wasn't in the choir, though, she was more of a big help to everybody. She would encourage you and she would help train your voice."

The Peebles Choir did a lot of travelling on the Gospel Caravans, going here and there, from city to city. "We opened shows for big Gospel acts. I can remember opening up for the Soul Stirrers at a very young age, so I got a chance to meet all these great people. When I got into R&B, it really wasn't the bright lights that thrilled me because I had already seen that. It was the idea of creating my own that really kept me going, and still keeps me going."

Although the Peebles Choir were immensely popular, to support his big family, Ann's dad worked part-time at a plant that made "shingles for your house, asbestos materials and that kind of thing". Ann's mother, Eula, was a housewife, "one of the best", Ann added. "We didn't have everything that we desired, but I wouldn't say we were poor-poor because we always had food on the table and there was enough room for everybody in the house. But we weren't rich." The Peebles' children were of course given a Christian upbringing, but were surprisingly enough not only allowed to listen to Secular music (even the Blues) but encouraged to do so. At least as long as it wasn't played too loud. "I listened to all kinds of music when I was growing up. I listened to Muddy Waters, all those people. I followed Sam Cooke, because Sam Cooke was with the Soul Stirrers as a Gospel singer, and that's how I heard him first. As a child, I listened to him, both as a Gospel singer and then later when he went to R&B. He was always one of my favorites. Mahalia Jackson was forever my favorite and Aretha Franklin. But my inspiration was my father and my mother. They welcomed that we listened to secular music because they saw it as a learning process. Anything different you listen to helps you to learn what other people, other musicians, are up to. And when I got ready to venture off into R&B, my mom was no longer living, but my dad encouraged me because he knew that's what I wanted. He brought back to my line of thoughts 'you know, you always were and always will be positive and I know you'll get out there and do your best'. He was right behind me on that and that was my encouragement to go off into the R&B field. If it had not been for him, I may not have had that great encouragement there. I am so proud to say that my father was ready to help me reach out, help me explore, because he knew it was out there for me. He always said; 'whatever is out there, if it's positive, go get it. I never brought you this far to let you be in one area, you need to explore every area of singing'. The rest of my sisters and brothers, I guess when they grew up, got married and had families, they lost interest. Maybe because singing wasn't something they wanted to make a living from. This is a business that you have to have your heart in. You have to do it straight from the heart if you're gonna stay in it. That's the only way you're gonna be able to stay in it and survive, to become somebody and have something."

Ann's fantasizes of becoming an R&B singer started when she was a teenager. She laughingly recalls how she used to sit in front of the mirror in her room, pretending to be performing for a live audience. "I used to play songs by people like the Marvelettes and Mary Wells and have my broomstick for my microphone and I'd pantomime. Looking at it now, it's all so silly but that's one of the things that probably helped me venture off, because I dreamed of that. And as I was doing it, I was saying to myself 'this is fantasizing now, but I'm gonna do this until it becomes reality'".

Ann came one step closer to realizing her dreams when she, escorted by her beloved father, started singing in the nightclubs of St. Louis. "I sung in several different clubs and that's how I got to know Oliver Sain who wrote my first record, the first that I ever recorded. I sung a lot of things with his band and he was like the number One big band leader in St. Louis at the time and if you got with Oliver Sain, you were doing something. Oliver Sain told me that I should venture out, which of course was in my heart to do anyway." Drummer, saxophonist and bandleader Sain knew talent when he saw it. His famous revue was the launching pad to success for vocalist/pianist/organist Fontella Bass and the late, great, singer Bobby McClure, among others. Before forming his Oliver Sain Revue, around 1963, Sain had worked with Sonny Boy Williamson, Howling Wolf, Elmore James and B.B. King, and was a serious rival to Ike Turner's the Kings of Rhythm. Sain had also organized and directed Blues master Little Milton's band (in which Fontella Bass incidentally played keyboards).

It was a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 that would change Ann's life forever. You may have read the story of how she supposedly came to Memphis to visit a girlfriend, but according to Ann, that was not how it happened. She didn't even know anyone in Memphis at the time. "The way I got to Memphis was that I had a brother in the service and he had a girlfriend who lived there. And when he came home to St. Louis on furlough, he brought his girlfriend with him and then when he drove her back to Memphis, I rode with them. We went out when we got there, to a club called Club Rosewood, and that's where I met 'Bowlegs' Miller who was the band leader there. I asked him if I could sit in and do a number and he said yes. The song I did was 'Steal Away', an old, old song and that's when he said: 'You should be signed up to a label!' I told him that's what I've wanted to do all my life, to sing, and that's what I've been doing, but I want to sing on my own."

A veteran of the Memphis music scene, trumpeter Gene "Bowlegs" Miller was one of the city's most popular bandleaders. Gene, who recorded for Hi Records, brought Ann to tryout for Willie Mitchell. "I wasn't nervous because I really didn't know that Willie was the important person that he was. I really didn't know, I just thought that this is the man that's gonna record me. When I read up on him, I found out that he really was The Man and that's when I got shaky", Ann laughed. Willie Mitchell was indeed an important figure, and someone an aspiring singer wanted to meet. Like "Bowlegs" Miller, he was an immensely popular bandleader, but as opposed to "Bowlegs", who sadly never found the commercial success he so rightfully deserved, Mitchell was also a thriving recording artist. He and his combo had first started cutting for Hi in 1961 and Mitchell soon became one of the label's backbone artists. Besides playing trumpet (and to a lesser extent keyboards), Mitchell was also hired for his skilled production, arranging, songwriting and engineering capabilities by Hi and other labels. He would personally produce and engineer the seven LP's Ann recorded for Hi.

When "Bowlegs" Miller brought Ann to meet Mitchell in 1968, it couldn't have been more timely. The label, which had been founded in the fifties by the late Joe Cuoghi, had been built on Rockabilly, Country and Rock 'n' Roll instrumentals. In fact, Hi was known as "the house of instrumentals" and it could have kept that, increasingly un-profitable, direction had not Willie Mitchell been given the A&R positioning in the mid sixties. The times were changing and Mitchell was able to persuade Cuoghi that the future for Hi was Soul music. Thirty years later, Ann remembers the audition like it was yesterday. "Willie sat down at the piano and played 'Steal Away', the song I did at the club and I sung it for him. He was just amazed, he was overwhelmed, but I couldn't sign up at the time, unless my father agreed. So my father had to come to Memphis and sign the papers."

In 1968, before her 21st birthday, Ann was contracted to Hi, where she would remain until the label succumbed. The duet "Mon Belle Amour", which Ann recorded with husband Don Bryant in 1981, was in fact the final 45 ever issued on Hi. Although Hi today is mainly associated with Al Green, arguably the most commercially successful artist on its roster, Ann was the first of its R&B artists to gain national acclaim (earlier attempts to impress R&B audiences with singles by Norm West, Don Bryant, Janet & The Jays, Veniece Starks, James Fry and others, had all failed). Ann was also signed to Hi before Al Green. "I sure was", Ann confirmed. "I didn't even know the rest of the artists that was on that label at that time because they were more like Country and Western artists. I got to know those people later. But Al, he came later. I do remember when he first started there, because it was kinda difficult, it was hard for them to find where they wanted to put Al Green. That was like an experimental thing, to do a lot of songs on him, to try to figure out what he sounded best doing."

Ann recalled how she was welcomed with open arms by Willie Mitchell and everyone else working at Hi. "When I got to know him, Willie became that family-fatherly-type to me. I was the only female and also the youngest person on the label. All of them, they sort of took me in as the baby of that Hi family. They watched over me and protected me. You know, even if I wanted to go to a club or something, I had to have somebody grown with me." Mitchell, well aware of Ann's limited experience with Rhythm & Blues, took great part in preparing Ann for her future career as a secular singer. "Willie showed me what the R&B circuit was all about. He took me out to a lot of places, to meet the discjockeys, meet different artists that were coming in to do shows. I went to those things, but I had to have a chaperone with me. I needed to know about R&B because I had never been in the R&B circuit, I'd never been to a real R&B show. As I look back now, I think that there were some great people behind me, great people watching over me and I guess that's why I am where I am today and I'm still the same person, because those people helped to keep me in that line of thought."

Among the most important  "great people" behind Ann was, and is, Donald "Don" Bryant. When Ann arrived at Hi, Don was already an established artist and in-house writer for the label. His ties with Willie Mitchell went all the way back to the early sixties, when Don and his group the Four Kings had served as Mitchell's regular singing and back-up group. Don was the lead vocalist and recorded several fine, but terribly underrated singles as a solo act for Hi.  His last came out in 1969, after which he chose to concentrate on his writing and supervising the career of his future wife. It was Willie Mitchell's idea to put Don to work with Ann, to teach her more about R&B phrasing, and to come up with songs for her. The couple started dating around 1972 and got married two years later, but it was far from love at first sight. Don was not too happy about this newcomer.  "That's absolutely  true", Don confirmed. "Because at the time I was still singing and trying to get into recording and before she came in, the concentration was on recording stuff on me. Then when she came in, all the concentration moved to her. The attention wasn't on me any more, if you catch my drift. She stole my glory", Don chuckled. " But I thank God for how it all worked out." 

Ann, on her behalf, said she didn't like Don's attitude. "I really disliked him. It was like 'don't tell me what to do. I've sung all my life', things like that. He was not much older than I, but he was acting kinda authoritative and I thought I was just as grown. He'd tell me: 'I want you to do this line like this, I want you to curl this line this way' and I wanted to do it my way. But it didn't take me long to know that I needed to do it the way he was telling me to, because I realized 'this is R&B'. Later on, I would thank Don, he was really the one that taught me that you have to do certain things in R&B. Don was a staff writer there and what he would write, I'd have to sit down and learn. Then I started writing lines myself and showing it to Don and he would help me with it, kinda create with me and encourage me to put down my thoughts. I had written many, many songs before I came to Hi, but I had never shown them to anyone. We just grew closer and closer and then we began to talk about our families and I found out that he too came from a large family, his mom and dad sang and had groups, and he'd sung in the church.. We discovered that we had so much in common and as we got to know each other, we felt that we belonged together. We've been together ever since. It's a great laugh for us to look back on that time when we first met."

Besides a lot of wonderful songs for Ann, the couple would provide consummate material for other Hi artists, including Otis Clay and Quiet Elegance, which was a female vocal trio. By studying Hi's roster, it's interesting to note that female artists were obviously not the label's forté. Besides Ann, Hi of course was home to several other female performers, both groups and vocalists,  but inexplicably, Ann was the only one to cut LP's. Perhaps, as Ann suggested, the reason was that she wrote and co-wrote so much of her own material. "A lot of females would start out there but they would get discouraged and go on and do something else. That's why I say that this is a business that you have to have your heart in. When I write lyrics, I usually try to play the chords I hear on the piano. I'm not a great pianist, but I know enough to be able to write. That gave me an advantage over a lot of artists that couldn't write, because I could hear chords and melodies in my mind that I'd play on the piano. I listened to all kinds of music for inspiration and I always have, because music is an art. I have my old time favorites and my newest favorites. I listen to country and western a lot because they tell a great story, just like R&B, and I basically listen to the lyrics and what the stories are about."

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