Adams,Yolanda

Singer

B orn Yolanda Yvette Adams, August 27, 1961, in Houston, Texas; daughter of Major and Carolyn Adams (both teachers); married first husband, 1988 (divorced); married Timothy Crawford Jr. (financial adviser and former NFL football player), 1997 (divorced, 2005); children: Taylor (daughter). Education: Graduated from Texas Southern University with a degree in broadcasting, early 1980s; took graduate classes in theology at Howard University, 1996.

Addresses: Record company—Columbia Records, 550 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10022. Web site— http://www.yolandaadams.org .

Career

M ember of Southeast Inspirational Choir, mid1970s to mid1980s; released first album Just as I Am, 1987; became a radio morning show host, 2007; announced plans for Yolanda’s Clozet clothing line, 2007.

Awards: Dove Awards for traditional gospel album of the year and traditional gospel recorded song of the year, Gospel Music Association, for Through the Storm and “Through the Storm,” 1992; Dove Award for traditional gospel recorded song of the year, Gospel Music Association, for “Is Your All on the Altar,” 1999; Grammy Award for best contemporary soul gospel album, Recording Academy, for Mountain High Valley Low, 1999; Image Award for outstanding contemporary gospel artist, NAACP, 2000; Image Awards for outstanding female artist, outstanding contemporary gospel artist, outstanding song (for “Open My Heart”), and outstanding performance in a variety series or special (for the Soul Train Awards), NAACP, 2001; Grammy Award for best contemporary soul gospel album, Recording Academy, for The Experience, 2001; American Music Award for contemporary/inspirational artist, Dick Clark Productions, 2001; Soul Train Music Award for Best R&B soul single, female, Don Cornelius Productions, for “Open My Heart,” 2001; Image Award for outstanding contemporary gospel artist, NAACP, 2002; BET Award for best gospel artist, Black Entertainment Television, 2002; BET Award for best gospel artist, Black Entertainment Television, 2003; Grammy Award for best gospel song, Recording Academy, for “Be Blessed,” 2005; Grammy Award for best gospel performance, Recording Academy, for “Victory,” 2006; Image Award for outstanding gospel artist, NAACP, 2006.

Sidelights

A leader of an exciting new wave of contemporary gospel music, Yolanda Adams has bent and mixed musical genres to spread her message of hope and devotion to God to as many listeners as she can. Adams’ fashionable dress challenges traditional notions of a gospel singer, while her music embraces jazz, R&B, and hip-hop, and her accounts of how her faith helped her cope with two divorces remind her fans that religious people are not expected to live perfect lives. Always reaching out to new audiences, Adams expanded her career after 20 years as a singer, introducing her own clothing line and becoming a radio host.

Born in Houston, Adams was singing in her church choir by age four. Her mother, Carolyn, who studied music, exposed her and her five younger brothers and sisters to classical music, R&B, and jazz. Her father, Major, died from injuries sustained in a car crash when she was 13. She helped her mother raise her younger siblings, attending Texas Southern University so she could live at home. After graduating with a degree in broadcasting, Adams spent seven years working as a second-grade and third-grade teacher, but she also sang gospel music, touring and performing on the weekends with the Southeast Inspirational Choir. Her influences included classic gospel acts such as the Edwin Hawkins Singers and James Cleveland, R&B star Stevie Wonder, and jazz singer Nancy Wilson.

In 1986, producer Thomas Whitfield saw Adams sing with the choir and signed her to his small Sound of Gospel label. He recorded her first album, Just as I Am, and released it in 1987. Its modest success led Adams to the gospel label Tribute Records. In 1991, Tribute released her second album, Through the Storm, which became a national success. It won two Dove Awards from the Gospel Music Association, and she performed on The Tonight Show and Arsenio Hall to promote it. With the album’s success, Adams no longer had enough time for both her musical and teaching careers. “I was so busy that I had to resign from teaching and go into ministry full-time,” she told Andree Farias for an article on ChristianityToday.com. “It was a hard decision. I love young kids.”

Between the first two albums, in 1988, Adams got married, but she later described the marriage as horrible. She left the relationship after nine months. Eventually, she began dating financial adviser and former professional football player Timothy Crawford Jr., a longtime friend whom she had met at age 16 when they both sang in church choirs around Houston. They married in 1997 and had a daughter, Taylor, in 2001.

Starting early in her career, Adams took a lot of risks for a gospel singer. Her 1993 album, Save the World, showed many secular influences, from jazz to R&B to Latin music. Adams proudly pointed to the Caravans, the wildly popular gospel group of the 1950s and 1960s, as a model. “[They] were on the cutting edge when they started out,” Adams told Lisa Collins of Billboard. “Now they’re what we call traditional gospel. Before, there were the basic hymns of the church. Then they came along and changed gospel music altogether.” Save the World’s chart success vindicated Adams’ creative gamble.

In 1995, with the release of More than a Melody, Adams was being celebrated as a leader in “a new gospel movement that is infusing and energizing gospel to record sales levels,” as Collins of Billboard put it. Adams declared that she felt called to stretch the limits of gospel music. “We want to take gospel a step further, so that it’s greeted in the marketplace by everybody, so I am making a conscious effort to not fit the mold,” she told Collins. Another Billboard writer, Paul Verna, declared she had succeeded. His review of More than a Melody called her “a major talent” and “one of gospel’s leading lights.”

One look at Adams’ song titles—“The Battle Is the Lord’s,” “The Good Shepherd”—makes it clear she is very devout. Yet she has little use for certain traditional images and expectations of gospel singers. The six-foot-one Adams often dresses with a sense of high fashion—her favorite designers include Donna Karan and Pamela Dennis—which helps her appeal to younger audiences. In 1998, Adams made a very unusual move for a modern gospel artist: She signed with a major label, Elektra Records. That, combined with her musical influences, led some conservative gospel fans to fear her work would turn secular. Adams insisted that the move to Elek-tra did not compromise her message, just broadened her audience. “We had about eleven record companies chasing us, and this is the only secular label that told me I didn’t have to change a thing,” Adams told Collins of Billboard.

Before her Elektra debut, Adams released one more album with Verity, the former Tribute label: Songs from the Heart, a collection of ten classic church hymns rearranged as modern R&B, jazz, and hip-hop. Less than a year later, Elektra released Mountain High Valley Low, promoting it heavily to gospel, R&B, and adult contemporary radio stations. “She’s one of those rare vocalists with a range that rivals the best,” Sylvia Rhone, the chairperson of Elektra, raved to Collins of Billboard. “I believe I could put her toe to toe with whoever one considers their favorite singer, and she could blow them away.”

In 2000, Adams won a Grammy Award for best contemporary soul gospel album for Mountain High Valley Low. She also scored a major R&B hit with “Open My Heart,” a single from the album, produced and co-written by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who had previously worked with Janet Jackson. Its lyrics were addressed to God: “I need to talk to you and ask you for your guidance,” she sang (as quoted by Jet magazine). “Just one word could make a difference in what I do Lord.”

To follow her breakthrough, Elektra released three albums in little more than a year. The holiday album Christmas with Yolanda Adams appeared at the end of 2000, followed quickly in March of 2001 by a live album, The Experience, recorded the previous November during the “Sisters in the Spirit Tour” with fellow gospel performers Angela Christie, Shirley Caesar, and Mary Mary. “Adams revels in her faith, praising her Lord with a clear-throated yet understated intensity,” wrote an appreciative Amy Linden in People. The live album spawned a single, a cover of R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly.”

Late in 2001, Elektra released an album of original material, Believe. Its slick R&B sound struck critics as an even bolder attempt to meld a gospel message with mainstream appeal. The first single, the uplift-ing ballad “Never Give Up,” was produced by Jam and Lewis. Chuck Arnold of People gave Believe a mixed review. Because Adams was aiming to please “both gospel purists and R&B fans,” he argued, “she can’t totally cut loose in either genre.” Michael Pa-oletta of Billboard, however, praised the album as “a seamless mix of gospel, R&B, hip-hop, and pop.”

After so much productivity, Adams went four difficult years without releasing an album. She returned to the studio in 2003, but her next album’s release was held up while Elektra Records merged into Atlantic Records. Meanwhile, her marriage to Crawford ended in 2005. She talked about her personal struggles at an outdoor concert in New York City’s Central Park that August. “The past few years have been kind of hard for me,” she said onstage (as quoted by reviewer Jeannette Toomer of the New York Amsterdam News). “I’ll tell you what it feels like to have a broken heart, because I had one.” She told the crowd that her faith helped her through her pain and disappointment, and she encouraged the audience not to dwell on past hurt: “Don’t let your tomorrow be your yesterday.”

Atlantic Records finally released Adams’ next album, Day by Day, in 2005. From her hurt, Adams produced songs that insisted on hope: Song titles included “Be Blessed,” “Someone Watching Over You,” and “This Too Shall Pass.” “I feel like we don’t address depression, grief, and loss in gospel music,” she told Farias of ChristianityToday.com. “We should, because we have the answer to those questions. Whenever I’m directing a lyric to a person, it is to get them to overcome.” “Be Blessed” and another song from the album, “Victory,” won Grammy awards.

Adams has been involved with several charities and causes. In 2005, she set up the Voice of an Angel Foundation, which encourages middle-school and high-school students to pursue careers as teachers. She has also worked with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to promote childhood immunizations in poor communities and has supported the Children’s Defense Fund and a charity fighting juvenile diabetes.

In 2007, Adams embarked on a major change in her career. She became a morning show host on a gospel radio station in Houston. The show was syndicated and broadcast in more than a dozen cities on the Radio One network. “It’s not a gospel show or an inspirational show, but an overall morning show,” she said in her Web site’s biography. “I wanted to create a clean alternative morning show for people of faith. People love the way we break down current events and our mix of music.” The show played songs by a diverse range of artists, from Mariah Carey to George Benson to John Mayer.

Adams left Atlantic Records, which released a greatest hits disc as her last album on the label, and signed with Columbia Records. “I needed to come to a place where singers are loved and adored,” she said in her Web site biography. “With everybody from Beyonce to Celine Dion, Columbia is that place. They really know what to do for people with voices.” Meanwhile, she prepared for the debut of her own clothing line, Yolanda’s Clozet, for tall women. Its jeans, T-shirts, and other items were to be sold online and at department stores.

That September, Adams performed with several other gospel stars at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Her performance impressed New York Times reviewer Kelefa Sanneh, especially her version of “Someone Watching Over You.” Her improvisations reminded Sanneh of a preacher’s. “She took a familiar musical phrase and embellished it, making it bigger and more forceful, and then, just when she seemed to have forgotten where she was going, returned to the theme,” he wrote.

As 2007 ended, Adams’ new Christmas album, What a Wonderful Time, was released. The album, produced by Jam and Lewis, included her versions of five Christmas classics, including “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “Little Drummer Boy,” and five original songs reflecting the spirit of the holiday season. Adams also planned to release a regular studio album, again produced by Jam and Lewis, in the first half of 2008. Her Web site reported that it would be an album of duets with legendary female singers.

Selected Discography

Just as I Am, Sound of Gospel, 1987.

Through the Storm, Tribute, 1991.

Save the World, Tribute, 1993.

More than a Melody, Tribute, 1995.

Yolanda Live in Washington, Verity, 1996.

Shakin’ the House: Live in L.A., Verity, 1996.

Songs from the Heart, Verity, 1998.

Mountain High Valley Low, Elektra, 1999.

The Best of Yolanda Adams, Verity, 1999.

Christmas with Yolanda Adams, Elektra, 2000.

The Experience, Elektra, 2001.

Believe, Elektra, 2001.

The Praise and Worship Songs of Yolanda Adams, Ver-ity, 2003.

Day by Day, Atlantic, 2005.

The Essential Yolanda Adams, Jive Legacy, 2006.

The Best of Me, Atlantic, 2007.

What a Wonderful Time, Columbia, 2007.

Sources

Periodicals

Billboard, February 5, 1994, p. 33; July 8, 1995, p. 32; August 12, 1995, p. 64; August 19, 1995, p. 34; September 12, 1998, p. 47; September 26, 1998, p. 22; September 18, 1999, p. 15; December 8, 2001, p. 53; May 19, 2007, p. 93; May 26, 2007, p. 38.

Essence, February 1996, p. 64; July 2001, p. 106.

Heart & Soul, May 2001, p. 60.

Jet, June 12, 2000, p. 55.

New York Amsterdam News, August 18, 2005, p. 22.

New York Times, September 24, 2007.

People, April 16, 2001, p. 41; January 14, 2002, p. 35.

Texas Monthly, August 2007, p. 28.

Online

“Atlantic Records: Yolanda Adams: Bio,” Atlantic Records, http://www.atlanticrecords.com/yolandaadams (November 23, 2007).

“One Day at a Time,” ChristianityToday.com, http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/interviews/2006/yolandaadams-0106.html (November 23, 2007).

“Yolanda Adams,” YolandaAdams.org, http://www.yolandaadams.org (November 27, 2007).

—Erick Trickey