Shirley Caesar - Biography
Since the passing of Mahalia Jackson in 1972, Shirley Caesar has been the most successful and widely celebrated woman in African-American gospel music. Dubbed the “First Lady of Gospel,” the singing evangelist has won 11 Grammy Awards, 18 Dove Awards, 14 Stellar Awards, as well as numerous other honors since the 1960s. She has been a standard-bearer for traditional gospel music, while challenging convention and pushing the envelope in the genre.
Born October 13, 1938, in Durham, North Carolina, Caesar was greatly inspired by her father, Big Jim Caesar, a tobacco farmer who sang with an a-cappella quartet called the Just Come Four. He died of a brain seizure when she was 10. To help support her semi-invalid mother, Hallie Caesar, and a dozen brothers and sisters, Shirley hit the road as a gospel soloist with a one-legged evangelist named Leroy Johnson. Billed as “Baby Shirley,” she cut her first single, “I’d Rather Have Jesus” backed with “I Know Jesus Will Save,” for Federal Records in November 1951. The label on the 78 RPM disc described her as a “12-year-old lass,” although she was actually 13 at the time of the recording.
In 1957, while majoring in business education at North Carolina State College, Caesar received “a call to the ministry.” She happily put her studies and her grander plans for becoming an evangelist on hold, however, when The Caravans passed through Durham the following year. The fast-rising Chicago group was missing a member, and Caesar convinced leader Albertina Walker that she knew all the parts. Walker—later known as the Queen of Gospel—was so impressed with what she heard that she invited the teenager to join the group. Caesar moved to Chicago and sang with The Caravans for the next eight years. During her tenure, the group boasted other dynamic lead singers—most notably Inez Andrews and Cassietta George—but the diminutive Caesar’s emotionally galvanizing delivery and highly-animated stage demeanor were central in making The Caravans the most popular female group in gospel music since The Ward Singers. Caesar’s intense leads were featured on such Caravans’ favorites as “I Won’t Be Back” (a.k.a. “Sweeping Through the City”), “No Coward Soldier,” “Holy Boldness,” and “Choose Ye This Day” on the Savoy and Vee-Jay labels.
Caesar preached her first sermon in Chicago while a member of The Caravans, but on record and in concert her spoken testimony was limited to sermonettes within the bodies of such songs as “Hallelujah It’s Done.” By the early ’60s, during breaks in the group’s schedule, she began getting offers to sing and preach apart from The Caravans. Sometimes, however, last-minute engagements and conflicts would come along for the group, and Walker would make Caesar cancel her own.
In 1966, Caesar finally left The Caravans and began appearing as “Evangelist Shirley Caesar” after signing with Hob Records. She has said that during her first few months as a solo artist, she made more money than she had in her entire eight years with The Caravans. Her sister, Ann Belle Caesar, became a charter member of Shirley’s new backing group, the Caesar Singers.
Caesar remained with Hob for a decade. The company often teamed her and her singers with choirs: the Young People’s Choir of the Institutional Church of God in Christ of Brooklyn in 1967; the Progressive Baptist Church Choir of St. Louis in 1968; and, beginning in 1970, the Thompson Community Choir of Chicago. Caesar’s association with the popular Chicago choir—led by Rev. Milton Brunson—outlasted her contract with Hob by a dozen years. She and her group also recorded an album in 1969 with former Swan Silvertones lead singer Claude Jeter.
Caesar won her first Grammy for her 1971 Hob recording of “Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee.” The song was originally by Canadian country singer-songwriter Gene MacLellan, and had been a #2 pop hit in the U.S. that year for the Canadian group Ocean. Caesar’s biggest hit for Hob, the sentimental “No Charge” in 1975, was also originally a country song. Written by prominent Nashville tunesmith Harlan Howard, “No Charge” had been a #1 country hit for Melba Montgomery a year earlier. Caesar’s gospel version peaked at #40 on Billboard’s R&B chart and at #91 on the magazine’s pop chart. It was the only crossover hit single of Caesar’s lengthy career, although she received heavy airplay on gospel radio programs for such other Hob singles and album tracks as “Don’t Be Afraid,” “Stranger on the Road,” “Loose That Man,” “Don’t Drive Your Mama Away,” “Nobody but You Lord,” “Teach Me Master,” “Get Up My Brother,” “When the Savior Reach Down for Me,” and “Be Careful of the Stones That You Throw.”
Few gospel performers have stirred up audiences the way Caesar has with her emotion-charged singing, spirit-fueled movements, and at times humor-laced stories. Early in her solo career, she was fond of telling a tale of repeated attempts by a record producer to get her to sing, as she put it, “the rock and roll.” Each time, the amount of money being offered is upped, until Caesar finally agrees to sign the contract, as long as it clearly states that she’ll “rock for Jesus” and “roll for the Holy Ghost.”
In 1978, the United Artists-distributed Roadshow label released First Lady, an album that utilized state-of-the-art production and disco-style rhythms. Selections included the country ballad “Faded Rose” and a reworking of Stevie Wonder’s “Jesus Children of America.” Although some in the Christian community objected to Caesar’s new direction, the album sold so well that it reached #36 on Billboard’s R&B chart.
Caesar signed with Word Records in 1980 and remained with the Waco, Texas-based Christian music company through 2004. Rejoice!, her debut album for Word, included the title track where her vocal delivery was as powerful as ever. The album won a Grammy for Best Soul Gospel Performance, Contemporary. She won two Grammys in 1984: Best Soul Gospel Performance, Female, for the album Sailin’ and Best Soul Gospel Performance, Duo or Group, for “Sailin’ on the Sea of Your Love,” a duet with Al Green from the album. She went on to win further gospel Grammys for the song “Martin” (1985) and for the albums He’s Working It Out for You (1992), Stand Still (1993), Live . . . He Will Come (1995), Just a Word (1996),and Christmas with Shirley Caesar (1999). Among favorite album tracks recorded by Caesar while with Word are “Jesus,” “The Lord Will Make a Way,” “Hold My Mule,” “Yes, Lord, Yes,” and “He’s Working It Out for You.”
Although Caesar had been highly critical early in her career of secular singers who record gospel songs, she eased up later on. In 1996, she performed “He’s All Over Me” with Whitney Houston on the soundtrack of the motion picture The Preacher’s Wife. In 2001, she recorded a duet version of “Steal Away” with Destiny’s Child member Michelle Williams. Caesar’s own 2003 CD, Shirley Caesar and Friends, featured collaborations with secular singers Oleta Adams, Faith Evans, Gladys Knight, and Patti LaBelle, as well as with gospel artists Kim Burrell, Kirk Franklin, and Dottie Peoples. And in 2005, Caesar performed “This Joy” with jazz pianist Eric Reed during a Hurricane Katrina relief benefit held at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, which was issued on the Blue Note CD Higher Ground: Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert.
In addition to her numerous recordings, Caesar has appeared on television in the series Good News, Soulfood, and The Parkers, on Broadway in This Is My Song and Born to Sing, and in the motion pictures Gospel, The Preacher’s Wife, Rosewood, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, The Fighting Temptations, and The Unseen.
The vocalist’s plans of completing her education and becoming a minister—which had been interrupted by her stint with The Caravans—eventually reached fruition. In 1984, Caesar earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Shaw University in North Carolina. In 1990, she was ordained as a pastor by her husband, Bishop Harold Ivory Williams, head of the Raleigh, North Carolina-based Mount Calvary Holy Church of America. The Pentecostal denomination has some 200 branches in Africa, India, England, and the Caribbean, as well as in the United States. Most of its pastors, according to Caesar, are women.
In 2004, the singer launched her own label, Shu-Bel Records, in a distribution partnership with Light Records. The title track of her company’s first CD, 2004’s I Know the Truth, featured Caesar rapping with Christian hip-hop artist Tonéx. Her 2008 Shu-Bel CD After 40 Years . . . Still Sweeping Through the City was recorded at Raleigh’s Mount Calvary Word of Faith Church, which she co-pastors with her husband. A career retrospective, it featured live versions of two of her hits with The Caravans, as well as many favorites from her solo career. Joe Ligon, lead singer of The Mighty Clouds of Joys, joined Caesar on three selections.
There are two CD collections of Caesar’s best-known Hob recordings—the 15-track Treasures (2005 Liquid 8) and the 17-track This Is Gospel: The Best of Shirley Caesar (2006 Calvin Records)—although many of the same songs appear on both. Fifteen 1983-2000 recordings for Word are compiled on Shirley Caesar: Greatest Gospel Hits (2003 Rhino).
