linda= In concert, Linda Faye Blakely demanded attention.
Once she started performing, she worked her hardest to never let it go.
Simply put, Linda Blakely lit up the stage.
"My grandmother said my mother had always been into music. Even when a little girl. She was always shaking her butt and trying to dance," said Joy Grimes, who is Blakely's daughter. "That was her dream. There was nothing that satisfied her more than being up there on that stage." Blakely, who died 12 years ago before reaching the age of 40, remains a strong link in the ever-expanding chain of Fatback history. "She was a very intricate part of the band," Bill Curtis said."Let's Play Tonight" became one of her signature songs with the Fatback Band. She also put her sassy stamp on such selections as "So Delicious," "I Found Lovin" and "Go Out With a Bang."
"I'd tell Linda, 'Go get 'em.' I turned her loose," Curtis recalled in a recent interview. "When I'd send Linda after the audience, she was going to bring the house down."
The "Mean Machine," her Fatback mates nicknamed her.But before this Louisville, Ky., fireball joined Bill Curtis and his fellow funksters, she had sung on the road as a background singer with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. She had also sung lead on a "lost recording" with a Louisville-based group that's now regarded as legendary in deep funk circles.
At 18, Blakely became an Ikette, sharing the stage with a barnstorming Ike and Tina Turner."She always went to the concerts," said Grimes. "Ike Turner was always calling for somebody to come up to sing onstage. She did. And she toured with them for about six months." It was a hectic time for Blakely, who was pregnant with Joy.She returned home to Louisville and, at 19, she gave birth to her only child. Blakely now had family to tend to, but music was calling. Like many of the fine rhythm-and-blues and soul singers of her day, Blakely got her start in the church. When she was 11, she added her voice to the Youth Choir at Greenstreet Baptist Church on Gray Street in Louisville. She later won both the Louisville Defenders' Exposition Beauty Contest and a scholarship to Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn. But once her voice developed, she realized she wanted to pursue a singing career.
Before joining Fatback, Blakely sang with the local Aristocrats.The Aristocrats (or Aristocrats Organization, as the group is often known) formed during the late 1960s in Louisville as a vocal quartet in the mold of the Drifters. Band members started sharing the stage with the energetic Blakely. In early 1974, she was given a solo showcase on the band's funk track "Don't Go," which initially served as the B-side to the group's take on the Billy Paul gem, "Me and Mrs. Jones." Speculation, according to the All Music Guide, is that the Rondo music label pressed no more than 1,000 copies. The song, a slab of hard-stepping, heavy-riffing female funk, can be found today on the 2001 BBE compilation, "Sister Funk." Grimes, who works in Nashville as a neurosurgical intensive care nurse, said, "It's unlike any other thing she did. She's known for being a balladeer."
Fatback was playing a date in Louisville at the fairgrounds when Blakely grabbed Curtis' attention. During the show, Grimes said, her mother jumped onstage and sang. She was hired along 1982, starting out as a dancer. Then Blakely made the move from dancer to vocalist.
The last few years she was with Fatback, she performed as a lead vocalist. "She had that Louisville accent that could win you over," Curtis said. "We could not go to certain places without people asking about her. We’d go to Europe and promoters called for the band. The first thing they would ask, 'Is Linda still in the band?' If Linda wasn't in the band, they wouldn't book us.” Curtis said Blakely never left the group. Rather, she got sick and was forced to drop out around 1990. "It was hard trying to replace her. To find that same energy." he said. As testament to her talent, Blakely remains the only lead female vocalist in Fatback's nearly four-decade-long existence. "She talked a lot about Fatback," Grimes said. "I think she enjoyed that. She was introduced to a lot of people. She loved Bill and Gerry (Thomas)."
After a year-long stay in a hospice, Linda Blakely passed away at age 39 in 1994 from complications from an autoimmune disease.She died the night her only child graduated from the University of Louisville. "What a great entertainer she was, and what a great singer,” Curtis said. "I just want people to know how important she was to the band, and we didn't want to forget her."
-Michael Futch