Jackie Verdell - Musical Career

Musical Career

After leaving high school, she joined the The Davis Sisters in 1955, at the start of their tenure with Herman Lubinsky and Ozzie Cadena's record label Savoy Records of Newark, New Jersey. How she came to sing with one of gospel's famous groups is a typical Golden Age gospel tale. Raised in the Church of God in Christ, she was a soloist in the choir of Faith Temple in New York, pastored by Bishop A.A. Childs (the church would later serve as the site of Malcolm X's last rites). Ruth Davis was attending a broadcast at which Jackie was singing and the rest is gospel history. Jackie Verdell possessed a powerful mezzo-soprano voice, and her performances on records such as "Lord Don't Leave Me", "Following Him", and "I Don't Know What I'd Do" made an impression on the young Aretha Franklin, amongst others. "I also considered Jackie Verdell of the Davis Sisters one of the best and most underrated female soul singers of all time" said Franklin in her 1999 autobiography Aretha: From These Roots. ""It was through Jackie that I learned the expression 'Girl, you peed tonight'--meaning you were dynamite. Several nights Jackie sang so hard she literally had a spot or two on her robe from peeing. Singing far too hard, I also peed here and there in the early days; I quickly realized no one should sing that hard." Verdell was second lead for The Davis Sisters between 1955 and 1960, featuring on many of their Savoy recordings.

Like Franklin, she left the gospel field in 1960 and began singing pop, her voice having deepened to a contralto and losing the upper register. She signed with Houston-based Peacock Records, releasing three singles between 1961 and 1964. None of them charted, but her own composition, "Why Not Give Me A Chance", produced by Dinah Washington's former producer Clyde Otis, seems to have attained a small level of popularity, being covered in later years by soul singers O.V. Wright on Peacock's subsidiary Back Beat Records in the late 1960s, and by Ruby Wilson on Malaco Records in the early 1980s. The Davis Sisters' recording session information in Gospel Records 1943 - 1969 suggests that Verdell was absent from the group during 1960 and 1961, returned in 1962 for further recordings on Savoy, was absent again in 1963, and then returned again in 1964 for more recordings on Savoy and RCA Records, apparently departing for good around 1966. Some television appearances with The Davis Sisters and Brother Joe May which were posted to YouTube in 2006 and 2007 appear to date from 1964.

After further unsuccessful pop singles on Decca Records (US) and its Coral Records subsidiary, the late 1960s and early 1970s found her contributing background vocals (along with Cissy Houston, Judy Clay, and other members of The Drinkard Singers or The Sweet Inspirations) to records by Wilson Pickett ("Cole, Cooke & Redding"), Dee Dee Warwick (Turning Around), Van Morrison (Moondance), Clarence Wheeler & The Enforcers, Horace Silver, and Martha Veléz, as well as a further solo single for Stax Records' Gospel Truth and Respect labels under the name of Jacqui Verdell. Her only solo album, Lay My Burden Down, produced by former soul singer Joe Simon, and including Houston & Warwick on background vocals, was released on Spring Records in 1983, and on CD by Ace Records (UK) in 1993. Viv Broughton's 1985 book Black Gospel: An Illustrated History Of The Gospel Sound stated, "Whereas Aretha Franklin lives in fabulous, if troubled, luxury - Jackie Verdell, who made the same move at the same time made nothing at all and is now back singing gospel to a faintly suspicious audience" (paperback edition, page 107). She once complained to gospel maven Anthony Heilbut: "I'd like to be an evangelist, but these crooked promoters won't pay my money". In 1988, she sang in the choir on the Carman album Live: Radically Saved. She died in 2002 without receiving the acclaim or financial remuneration she felt was due in either the pop or gospel fields.