Millie Jackson

One of America's finest purveyors of raunchy, red-hot soul music, Millie Jackson was born Mildred Virginia Jackson (July 15th, 1944) in Thompson, Georgia and raised in New York City, initially living in Newark, New Jersey before settling in Brooklyn in her mid-teens. She first drew attention to her voice after winning a talent contest in Harlem in 1964 and found fame with the 1971 breakthrough single "A Child of God (It's Hard to Believe)," which was gospel by name but certainly not by nature. The track reached number 22 on the R&B chart and secured her fate as a vital new voice on the scene. Her self-titled debut album arrived in 1972 and two others followed – It Hurts So Good (1973) and I Got to Try it One Time (1974) – before the emergence of her career-defining fourth record, Caught Up, in January 1975, throughwhich she launched her signature, sexually charged rap-led aesthetic. Caught Up was propelled into the spotlight by "If Loving You Is Wrong I Don't Want to Be Right," for which she received two Grammy nominations. She went on to hone her salacious sound further on subsequent albums such as Still Caught Up (1975) and Feelin' Bitchy (1977) before jumping on the disco train in 1976 with the group Facts of Life. Over the next ten years, Millie Jackson scored numerous Top 100 singles for Spring Records and in 1986, she signed with Jive and released her fifth and sixth Top Ten singles in "Hot! Wild! Unrestricted! Crazy Love" and "Love Is a Dangerous Game," reaching number nine and six on the R&B charts respectively. In 1991, she wrote, produced, and starred in the play Young Man, Older Woman – based on her album of the same title for Jive – which toured for four years. In 2014, the compilation On the Soul Country Side was released and the following year she was inducted into the Official Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame in Clarksdale, Mississippi.