Freda Payne

Famed for her hit single Band Of Gold in 1970, Freda Payne's career crossed between jazz, soul, disco and R&B styles and included stints in Broadway musicals, Hollywood movies and even her own TV chat show. Growing up in Detroit, she idolised Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, began competing in talent contests at 12-years-old and was part of a choral group that sang spiritual songs on local radio. She turned down offers from Berry Gordy to be one of the first signings to his Motown label and from Duke Ellington who wanted her to front his orchestra, and instead moved to New York in the early 1960s to become a jazz singer. She subsequently worked with Quincy Jones and released big band albums After The Lights Go Down And Much More! and How Do You Say I Don't Love You Anymore. By the end of the decade her old school friend Lamont Dozier had found success as part of the legendary Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team which produced some of Motown's biggest hits and, after setting up their own Invictus Records label, they asked Payne to record a new song they'd penned. Although she wasn't initially keen on the track, the strutting shuffle and bitter-sweet pop joy of Band Of Gold first became popular in the gay community before topping the charts in Britain for six weeks and reaching number three in the US. Follow-up singles Deeper & Deeper and Bring The Boys Home made it into the US top 30, but albums Contact and Payne & Pleasure fared less well. After a short marriage to American singer Gregory Abbott, she turned her hand to the disco music that became so popular in the late 1970s. In the 1980s she formed a partnership with Edmund Sylvers (of the group The Sylvers), who produced her 1982 single In Motion. Returning to performing jazz standards in the late 1990s, she went on tour with Cliff Richard in 2011, duetting with him on the track Saving A Soul. She released her 17th studio album Come Back To Me Love in 2014.