Linda Tillery

Linda "Tui" Tillery (born September 2, 1948) is an American singer, percussionist, producer, songwriter, and music arranger. She began her professional singing career at age 19 with the Bay Area rock band The Loading Zone. She is recognized as a pioneer in women's music, with her second solo album titled Linda Tillery released on Olivia Records in 1977. In addition to performing, she was the producer on three of Olivia's first eight albums. Within the women's music genre, she has collaborated with June Millington, Deidre McCalla, Barbara Higbie, Holly Near, Margie Adam, and others. Tillery was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1997 for Best Musical Album for Children.

Tillery has been a professional musician for her entire adult life and has had a long career as a backing or supporting vocalist for mainstream artists as diverse as Santana, Bobby McFerrin, Huey Lewis and the News and the Turtle Island String Quartet. In the early 1990s, she began exploring the roots music of enslaved Africans and the African diaspora, forming the group The Cultural Heritage Choir.

Early life Tillery was born in 1948 to parents who migrated from Texas to San Francisco Her father (Horace) was a carpenter whose first job after moving to California was at the Hunters Point Shipyard. Her mother (Eva L.) was a seamstress and later worked at a job pressing garments in a Chinatown sweatshop. By age 2, her favorite singer was Dinah Washington, whose recording of "That's All I Want From You" was particularly loved by Tillery and was the first song she memorized. Tillery claims that she learned how to read by looking at the labels from her parents' record collection. "Basie was on Verve. Dinah was on Mercury". She also admired Ethel Merman's big voice, going into her parents' acoustically-pleasing bathroom and trying to imitate Merman's song "There's No Business Like Show Business".

Tillery is a self-taught singer, but her formal music education began at age 13 when she studied the classical bass at Lowell High School in San Francisco. She dropped out to begin singing professionally.

Tillery recalled her audition day with humor. Loading Zone guitarist Steve Dowler went to Tillery's house to pick her up. "Her mother saw a hippie at the door and refused to let him in".

The Loading Zone's style has been described as psychedelic soul, and they have been compared somewhat to Sly and the Family Stone. Another critic called their music "a distinctive blend of garage rock, R&B, and jazz".

1970-1977: Debut solo album and session work

As early as 1968, Tillery was performing as a solo artist around the Bay Area under the name Sweet Linda Divine. She signed with CBS Records and released her debut album titled Sweet Linda Divine in 1970. She also sang backing vocals on the song "Everything's Coming Our Way" from the same album.

During this time, Tillery was a member of the jazz fusion band Cesar 830, appearing on two albums.

Another group with whom she performed during this period was Jessica Hagedorn's Gangster Choir. The "poet's band" had two distinct incarnations based on Hagedorn's residencies in San Francisco in the 1970s and New York City in the 1980s. Tillery was a member of the West Coast Gangster Choir's vocal trio, the Gangsterettes.

Of this period in her career, Tillery said "Then my education as a hard-working singer began…. I was what I call a '9-to-5 musician' from '70 to '77. Played with a lot of bands, did a lot of club work, only the hours were 9 to 2".

Tillery's next job with Olivia Records was producing Teresa Trull's debut album titled The Ways A Woman Can Be. Released in 1977, this album also contained overt lesbian/feminist lyrics. In addition to producing, Tillery played drums and contributed supporting vocals to the recording.

Also in 1977, Olivia released the compilation album Lesbian Concentrate in response to Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade. Tillery contributed the song "Don't Pray For Me" to the LP, which was composed by Mary Watkins. This song has been recognized by scholars as one of the first songs to directly challenge homophobia.

Later in 1977, Olivia Records released Tillery's second solo album, titled Linda Tillery. Tillery was the lead producer, with co-producer credits to bassist Diane Lindsay and keyboardist/string and horn arranger Mary Watkins. It featured Tillery on lead and supporting vocals, drums and percussion, and marked the first time that Tillery, Watkins, and vocalist/vocal arranger Vicki Randle appeared together on an album. Like all Olivia projects at the time, all of the musicians as well as technical staff were female, including Sandy Stone as recording engineer. The album included a slightly longer version of "Don't Pray For Me", as well as two songs with overt lesbian lyrics: "Womanly Way" and "Wonderful", the latter of which was the first song composed entirely by Tillery. The song "Freedom Time", co-written by Tillery and Watkins, brings attention to the problems of being black and female and gay with the lyrics: "If I could just tell you what it's really like/To live this life of triple jeopardy/I fight the daily battles of all my people/Just to sacrifice my pride and deny my strength". This song has been cited as influential in scholarly studies of black feminism and in feminist journals. It also exposed audience members to an empowering lesbian culture that was emerging across the USA and it "demonstrated that white lesbians were not the only ones creating a new women's culture: Though the concert [tour] was first and foremost a celebration of Black lesbian feminist identity and culture, it was also an attempt to broaden the white feminist community's understanding of feminist and lesbian identity…. Varied Voices was a watershed event in the history of black women and women-identified music".

Linda Tillery was the only album she released on Olivia Records, and Tillery left the collective in 1979.

Tillery has referred to herself as the "queen mother" to women's music, to both deflect the tendency of some to look upon her as a sex object, as well as to recall the term's honorific association in some African cultures.

1980-early 1990s: More women's music, more session work, and club bands

Although she ended her formal relationship with Olivia in 1979, Tillery remained an important figure in the women's music scene throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. She has performed at many women's music festivals including the first Michigan Womyn's Music Festival ("MichFest") in 1976 and several subsequent years, bringing her authentic expression of African American blues and R&B to women's music festival audiences. A favorite project that she initiated at MichFest was called "A Tribute to Black Women in the Blues" which presented Tillery's "respect and gratitude paid to some women who might have been otherwise ignored. Who were otherwise ignored! And it was one of the most satisfying moments in my life". A recording was made of the tenth anniversary of MichFest in 1985 with Tillery contributing her rendition of the Al Green hit song "Love and Happiness" to the LP.

For several years at MichFest, Tillery also lead the festival gospel choir that included both professional musicians and festival attendees, which traditionally performed on Sunday mornings. After a controversy whereby some white choir members changed the gender pronouns from male to female in song selections, the 1992 MichFest program booklet description of the choir, led by Tillery, stated: "The repertoire will draw from spirituals and gospel standards and the workshop will include a discussion of the cultural roots of gospel music. The music will be sung exactly as it is written (no gender substitutions of pronouns or names)". Roadwork's Sisterfire festival in 1983, and at the first Southern Women's Music Festival in 1984.

On November 26, 1982 Tillery was a member of the all-female band that performed with Meg Christian and Cris Williamson at Carnegie Hall in New York City, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Olivia Records. Tickets to the two-show performance were sold-out two months prior to the evening to 5,400 women and 200 men, and Olivia released the concert as an LP in 1983, on their Second Wave subsidiary label.

In 1985, Tillery released her third solo album titled Secrets on her own independent 411 Records label and distributed by Redwood Records. despite some positive reviews in the gay press such as "Linda Tillery's latest album … is one of the best records ever to find its way into the Women's Music section of a record store". Secrets garnered some radio airplay in major metropolitan areas such as San Francisco.

Tillery and band toured during 1985 to support the release of Secrets. The touring band included pianist Julie Homi, who performed in both the mainstream New York jazz scene as well as the women's music circuit. Tillery's May 3, 1985 performance at Boston's Strand Theater was especially significant because the show was opened by a then-little known Tufts University undergraduate singer named Tracy Chapman, who made her major-stage debut that evening. considered by many to be one of the area's "most revered vocalists since the 1960s". that both featured Tillery as a vocalist. During this time period, Linda also shared lead vocals with her younger brother Calvin Tillery in the house band at Slim's nightclub in San Francisco which was co-owned by rock/blues musician Boz Scaggs, who often sat in with the band. She was briefly a member of the ZaSu Pitts Memorial Orchestra

In the early 1990s, Tillery formed and played with the popular Bay Area all-woman Skin Tight Motown Revue band, an R&B/blues/pop outfit Skin Tight's first performance was at the 1990 Association of Women's Music and Culture (AWMAC) conference in San Francisco, and they "brought the house down".

In 1993, Tillery was among the performers who celebrated Olivia's 20th anniversary weekend in San Francisco, which coincided with the city's annual Gay pride festivities. On Friday June 25, Tillery performed for the first time in ten years with Mary Watkins at Zellerbach Hall. The duo performed Tillery's song "Womanly Way", and later in the set Tillery was joined by other Olivia artists Dianne Davidson, Deidre McCalla, Nancy Vogl, Teresa Trull, Cris Williamson, Tret Fure, and Lucie Blue Tremblay. On Saturday, Tillery and Skin Tight performed at a dance called "Puttin' On The Ritz" that was jointly sponsored by Olivia and the Bay Area Career Women organization, to celebrate BACW's tenth anniversary and Olivia's twentieth anniversary. That evening, Skin Tight's membership consisted of Ellen Seeling and Jean Fineberg on horns, Joy Julks on bass, Nancy Wenstrom on electric guitar, Maria Martinez on drums, Bonnie Hayes on keyboards (subbing for regular pianist Julie Homi), with Tillery, Vicki Randle, and Teresa Trull providing the vocals. Tillery said of that moment: "It practically lifted me out of my seat. I was thinking 'This is the new road. This is the new path. This is the new journey I'm going to take' ". who all lived within a 15-mile radius of Tillery's Oakland home.

Tillery says that the CHC's music is 100 percent black, but "75 percent of the audience is white and 25 percent will be African American or other…. It's a hard thing to explain. We deal with a lot of what is typically called 'slave music.' And I suppose that there are some people who just want to forget that period of time and the events that occurred. However, I have found that the byproduct of slavery, the art that came out of that particularly dreadful time, to be absolutely stimulating and exciting. And sometimes I wonder why it is not as exciting to other African Americans".

Tillery said that from the inception of the CHC, "the educational aspect would be the most important part of this…. A lot of people never knew, or have forgotten, the origin of some of our most important music in this country. Many of the songs we hold near and dear today are actually spirituals". She found that voice in 2003 in Lamont Van Hook, the group's first male performer, who brought an Al Green-like falsetto to the group's vocal arsenal. Van Hook had toured for several years as a background singer for Rod Stewart. Tillery had decided by that time that the gender issue was no longer as important as it once was. "What I really wanted was really good singers and good musicians. And folks we could get along with". The second male performer was added in 2005 when Simon Monserrat joined the group, bringing his vast knowledge of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. The group has also added more contemporary music to their repertoire and has become "less myopic".

The Cultural Heritage Choir has performed all across the United States and in 13 countries. Tillery has stated that "what I love most of all are international music festivals because they provide me with an opportunity to see and hear what's going on in the rest of the world....It's amazing how much music there is and most people don't get to hear or take the time to hear the stuff that doesn't get played on the radio unless they're tuned into some kind of network". composed and arranged A Long Way Home: Concertizing the Golden Triangle for San Francisco International Arts Festival.

Recordings As of 2009, Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir have released six albums, including two children's albums. All were produced or co-produced by Tillery, and she provided the majority of the song arrangements.

Their debut CD Good Time, A Good Time was self-published in 1995, with Carlos Santana describing the recording as "a truly landmark project with historical value".

The Choir's second recording was Front Porch Music, released in 1997 on the EarthBeat! label. Their next release on the same label was a 2001 live recording titled Say Yo' Business that included guest appearances by Wilson Pickett, Laura Love, Richie Havens, Odetta, Kelly Joe Phelps, Eric Bibb and Kitka. In 2009, the Choir returned to self-publishing with the release of Still We Sing, Still We Rise.

The group issued two children's albums on the Music for Little People label. 1997 saw the release of Shakin' a Tailfeather with Taj Mahal and Eric Bibb, which was nominated for a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children. The recording Hippity Hop with Taj Mahal, Eric Bibb, Sheila E., Maria Muldaur, and Shinehead was released in 1999.

Expanding collaborations

In addition to her solo, session work, women's music, and Cultural Heritage Choir careers, Tillery has collaborated with many other artists in various genres including music, theater, radio, film, and television. She has also taught classes and workshops as part of her role as an "activist educator".

Tillery was a founding member of Bobby McFerrin's 10-person ensemble Voicestra, including performing on the soundtrack of Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989). During her seven-year stint with Voicestra, she appeared on many television shows including The Arsenio Hall Show, Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, and Entertainment Tonight as well as concerts with the Boston Pops, and at the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, and the Tokyo Music Festival.

She also appeared in VH1 specials with Bobby McFerrin and the Kenny Loggins band. Some of the commissioned works were later performed by other choirs across the country, including the Boys Choir of Harlem and MUSE, The Cincinnati Women's Choir.

She created and performed the music for the dance Invisible Wings, with choreographer Joanna Haigood. The dance was commissioned by Jacob's Pillow in 1998 and was the result of three years of research and collaboration between Haigood, Tillery as musical director, and storyteller Diane Ferlatte. It tells the story of Jacob's Pillow as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and was revived in August 2007 for the finale of Jacob's Pillow Festival's 75th anniversary season. The 2007 performance included Tillery and members of the Cultural Heritage Choir, and portions of the dance were included on a DVD about the festival titled Never Standing Still: Dancing at Jacob's Pillow (2012).

Tillery and Haigood with the Zaccho Dance Theater teamed up again on October 19, 2008 for a one-time performance of It Takes Two To Tango at Miraflores Winery in Pleasant Valley, California. The performance celebrated the history of the tango and its blending of African rhythms with Argentine milonga music, influenced by the intermixing of African, Spanish, Italian, British, Polish, Russian, and native Argentinian cultures in Buenos Aires.

Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir were the artists-in-residence at the Cache Valley Arts Festival (Utah) in 2004.

Tillery was the featured vocalist at a March 13, 2005 concert in Sacramento, California to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of composer Harold Arlen. She was accompanied by the 71-piece Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra on two seldom-sung Arlen songs, "A Sleepin' Bee" and "I Had Myself a True Love".

In May 2005, Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir collaborated with Deborah Vaughan, founder and artistic director of Dimensions Dance Theater to create a performance called Spirits Uplifted I, which celebrates the positive aspects of Oakland, California. "The city gets such a bad rap. Not enough is focused on what is positive in Oakland" said Vaughan about the work.

In 2011, Tillery acted as musical director for a Bay Area production of August Wilson's play Seven Guitars. The collaboration "fuses the bluegrass sounds of the Kentucky rolling hills with the hills and field hollers of the Mississippi Delta". written by Marcus Gardley and produced by the California Shakespeare Theater in 2017. The initial run of the play was so successful that Cal Shakes reprised the production in fall 2018.

In July 2017, Tillery reconnected with Mary Watkins, Vicki Randle, Diane Lindsay and other musicians in a "Womanly Way Reunion Band" performance at the National Women's Music Festival. The reunion band then toured to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Tillery's Olivia Records album that featured the song "Womanly Way".

In September 2018, Tillery and former Meters drummer Zigaboo Modeliste teamed up in a "Bay Area funk supergroup" and appeared as festival headliners to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Freight and Salvage music venue in Berkeley, California.

Activist educator

Putting her ethnomusicological research to work in educational settings, Tillery was a visiting scholar and taught classes at Stanford University in 2009, as well as at Williams College.

She and fellow musician Teresa Trull were guest lecturers at a San Francisco State University class on women's music taught by Angela Davis.

In June 2003, Tillery gave the keynote speech at the Phenomenon of Singing International Symposium IV, in Newfoundland, Canada titled "The Voice as an Instrument of Peace and Motivating Force for Justice".

Tillery was a presenter at the November 2009 "Reclaiming the Right to Rock Conference" at Indiana University.

Tillery wrote the foreword to the scholarly book Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women's Music by Eileen M. Hayes (University of Illinois Press, 2010). A 2015 news story identified her partner as Ann Jefferson, director of Community Life and Spiritual Care at Pacific School of Religion. She had bilateral carpal tunnel surgery and has back issues. She appeared in a wheelchair, and during a break between songs Tillery discussed her experiences with heart surgery.

Her younger brother Calvin Tillery is also a vocalist. They have recorded together on Coke Escovedo's album Coke (1975), and on Linda Tillery and the Freedom Band's album Celebrate the King (2012).

Awards and recognition

Jammie (Bay Area Jazz Award) winner, Outstanding Female Vocalist for Sweet Linda Divine (1970) Parents' Choice "Gold" winner, Shakin' a Tailfeather, 1998 Parent's Choice "Gold" winner, Hippity Hop, 2000 California Music Award nominee, Say Yo' Business, 2003 Community Leadership Award, San Francisco Foundation, 2014 and 2015 "Linda Tillery Day" jointly declared by the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley on September 29, 2023

Discography Solo

The Loading Zone Album title Record label Stock number Release year The Loading ZoneRCA RecordsLSP 3959 1968, reissued on CD 2001 (UK) One for AllUmbrella Records1011970

Linda Tillery and The Cultural Heritage Choir

Linda Tillery and the Freedom Band Album title Record label Stock number Release yearCelebrate the KingRound Whirled RecordsRWR00422012

Singles and EPs

Various artist compilation albums

Producer credits

Songwriter credits

Guest appearance credits

Films

Roseland (directed by Fredric Hobbs, 1971); Tillery appears as the lead vocalist of The Loading Zone Tryin' To Get Home: A History of African American Song (written and performed by Kerrigan Black for Heebie Jeebie Music, 1993, VHS); Tillery is credited with "Narration of biography" Black is... Black Ain't (directed by Marlon Riggs, copyright Signifyin' Works, 1995; includes a brief singing scene with Tillery, a brief speaking role for Tillery, and she performs three songs on the soundtrack ("We Shall Overcome", "We Shall Not Be Moved", and "Lift Every Voice and Sing") with the Harriet Tubman Underground Freedom Train Singers. Distributed by California Newsreel. Radical Harmonies (directed by Dee Mosbacher, Woman Vision, 2002, DVD); includes multiple interview scenes with Tillery and some performance footage Never Stand Still: Dancing at Jacob's Pillow (directed by Ron Honsa, First Run Features, 2012, DVD); Tillery is listed in credits as Featured Artist; includes a few short interview scenes with Tillery and some performance footage of the dance "Invisible Wings" for which Tillery was music director and Cultural Heritage Choir performed the music