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Soul Express Interview/Article

By Heikki Suosalo

DENIECE WILLIAMS

Part 3 (1982 – 2008)

Deniece Williams Story Part 1
Deniece Williams Story Part 2 (1975 – 1981)
Deniece Williams Album Discography

In 1981 Deniece Williams and Thom Bell collaborated on a classy album entitled My Melody, which spawned a timeless beauty called Silly.  After finding the magic formula in composing and producing, Deniece and Thom continued working together and created another masterpiece released in early 1982, an album simply titled Niecy (ARC 37952).

Again it was recorded at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia and the rhythm section was exactly the same as on the previous album - Bobby Eli and Bill Neale on guitars, Thom Bell and George Merrill on keyboards, Bob Babbitt on bass, Charles Collins on drums and Larry Washington and Ed Shay on percussion.  It became one of the highest charted albums in Deniece’s career, when it peaked at # 5-soul and # 20-pop in Billboard.

IT’S GONNA TAKE A MIRACLE

As a taster from the upcoming album they first released a single, a cover of the Royalettes ’65 middle-sized hit called It’s Gonna Take a Miracle (# pop-41).  Thom Bell: “I think Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein did that song (plus Lou Stallman).  I love their writing.  And I love the arranging that Don Costa does for Little Anthony and the Imperials.  That was the first guy that turned me on – Don Costa!  They had I’m on the Outside (Looking In), Hurt So Bad, Goin’ Out Of My Head… After that came Burt Bacharach, another one I loved.  They were applying their classical training, I believe, to so-called r&b, modern music.  I didn’t know anything about the so-called r&b music at all, until I was about seventeen-eighteen, because that’s not where my family was leaning me.  I come from the classical end of it.”

Deniece: “I’ve grown up listening to It’s Gonna Take a Miracle.  I heard that, when I was fifteen years old, and I absolutely love the song.  I only sang gospel music growing up.  We didn’t do any r&b or any other kinds of music.  That was a no-no, against our belief.  But there was a group at high school that was going to perform in this talent show and one of their singers got ill.  They asked if I could sing with them in this talent show, because our girl can’t do it and we still want to do it.  I learned It’s Gonna Take a Miracle and sang background.  There was another girl, who sang lead.  We did really well in the talent show.  We didn’t win.  That was the only school talent show that I performed in, but that’s the song we did.  As I was sitting around the kitchen one day with Thom Bell, I was saying ‘do you know this song’ and I started humming it to Thom.  Then we left the kitchen, got to the piano and started singing the song and Thom said ‘let’s do it’.”

Thom: “Every now and then I do an older song like It’s Gonna Take a Miracle.  That’s very rare for me.  If you look at my career, I don’t usually do them.  They’re boring to me.”  Deniece’s single went all the way to the very top of the soul charts in May 1982 and stayed there for two weeks (# 10-pop). 

WAITING BY THE HOTLINE

In July they released the follow-up, a catchy mid-tempo song called Waiting by the Hotline (# 29-black, # 103-pop), written by Deniece and Thom, and it’s the kind of a song that could have been tailor-made for the Spinners a few years earlier.  Thom: “I have found that once a writer writes something, that writer has its own fingerprints.  They have their own DNA.  If I’ve heard you once, I automatically know who you are the second time around, because I know your fingerprints.  It’s the same way with me.”

By the end of the year 1982 still one more single was released, a smooth slowie named Waiting (# 72-black), which again was written by Deniece and Thom.  Thom: “I always try to write great melodies, because I always felt that the consumer deserves to get for their money the best that I can give them.  I hate to hear some of those albums years ago that would come out with one hit single and the rest of it is junk.  A lot of the albums that came out in the 50s, 60s and 70s – they were junk.  They were terrible, and the companies were actually ripping people off with those albums.  I felt that I didn’t want that.  I want people to know, when they’ve heard a Thom Bell product.  It might not be a hit product, but it’s a good product.”

One of the goodies that the two wrote together for the album is Now Is the Time for Love, a soft and melodic uptempo song, whereas a lovely serenade called A Part of Love was penned by Deniece and Kevin Bassinson, an upcoming music score composer.  Thom: “That was one of my little surprises.  That’s the one I did with three cellos.”

Unfortunately, after those two lovely albums Deniece and Thom discontinued their collaboration.  Thom: “What happened was that she was going through a religious awakening, and religion is really not my thing.  Religion and politics are the two areas I stay away from.  I stay away on purpose, because I feel that they’re very personal with people.  You can’t get much more personal than your religion, what you believe in or what you don’t believe in.  You’re going to get yourself in areas that you know nothing about.  I’m not a preacher.  I’m not Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi… They do that for living.  I don’t.  I do music for living.”

A turning point for Deniece was, when she performed with Philip Bailey and Billy and Marilyn McCoo at a gospel show in Los Angeles in 1980 and “God did something miraculous.  Over three hundred people were saved.”  After the show she and Phillip decided to pursue careers in Christian music, and Deniece was also about to stop working with Thom on the My Melody album but luckily she reconsidered.

Thom: “She’s a fantastic singer.  You very rarely ever can find a singer that can do things that she does.  Performing is not what she does good, but she’s a great singer.  She has that 4-octave range, and her voice is extremely powerful.  Like most great singers, you have to give them something that will challenge them.  If you don’t do that, that’s boring.  Deniece is one of the best singers that I’ve ever worked with in any key.  She rarely ever, ever sings flat.  All the time – early in the morning or late at night – she rehearses, practices, and she’s a clean, classy lady.”

Thom has some exciting things to look forward to.  Thom: “They’ve asked me to conduct the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, and I’m planning on that, doing a whole evening.  If you know anything about that orchestra, that’s one of the oldest in the world.  I will be the first one off my kind of music – so-called pop music, or r&b music… any name you want to give it – to do something like that, and believe me, I’ll do the job, buddy! (laughing).  That won’t be until next September.  I will be working hard all that time, studying… a lot of serious work.”

DO WHAT YOU FEEL

After Maurice White’s ARC imprint ceased to operate, Deniece reverted to Columbia, the parent company, for her next album.  Deniece: “I had a party at my home.  I knew George Duke’s wife Corine, before I knew George.  She came with George, and we just instantly hit it off.  He’s such a wonderful, lovable person.  I’ve had a lot of respect for his music, what he’s done with Frank Zappa and Stanley Clarke… quite a few things.  When he was leaving, he said ‘we should work together sometime’, and I said to him ‘I would actually love that.  I think that would be great’!  And it led, of course, to one of the largest songs in my career…”  At the party Deniece also gave George one of her songs, I’m Glad It’s You, for him to record it on Sister Sledge, but George preferred Deniece to do the song… and a whole album in the end.

George (www.georgeduke.com) produced four tracks for the I’m So Proud album (Columbia 38622; # 10-black, # 54-pop), which was released in late spring 1983.  In his Los Angeles sessions he used such musicians as Louis Johnson on bass, Mike Sembello on guitar, Rickey Lawson on drums, Paulinho da Costa on percussion and himself on synths, which in a way marked also a new twist in Deniece’s sound.  On the first single, an energetic dancer called Do What You Feel (written by Deniece and George), there’s also Ernie Watts on tenor sax.  When released in early spring 1983, the song gave Deniece a top-ten black hit (# 9-black, # 102-pop).

George’s other contributions included I’m Glad It’s You, the very same beautiful ballad that Deniece gave him at her party, a disco dancer titled Heaven in Your Eyes and a mover named It’s Okay, with a children’s choir – including Deniece’s two sons, Ken and Kevin – joining in at the end.  Deniece herself produced a mid-tempo item with a reggae beat called Love, Peace and Unity, and it was cut at Sigma Sound Studios in New York.

I’M SO PROUD

The follow-up single, a slow cover of I’m So Proud (# 28-black), was produced by Deniece and guitarist/arranger/conductor/producer Bill Neale.  Lee Oskar plays the harmonica solo on it.  Bill had earlier co-written I Believe in Miracles with Deniece for the Niecy album.  Deniece: “I’m So Proud was something that I wanted to do.  I was a huge Curtis Mayfield fan.  I was growing up listening to him and the Impressions as a child and a teenager.”  The original Impressions record was released in 1964.

The two other songs that Deniece and Bill produced together were duets.  They Say is an atmospheric, slow song that builds up towards the end, and Deniece cut it with an old friend from her Earth, Wind & Fire days, Philip Bailey.  “Philip and I wanted to do a gospel song together, and some friends of ours – Skip Scarborough and Terri McFaddin – had written a song we really loved, They Say.  We decided to go into the studio and do this gospel record, and it turned out wonderful.  I also recorded it with a Christian artist, Sandi Patti, and we won a Grammy for it.”

To return the favour, Deniece visited on Philip’s debut solo album, Continuation (on Columbia in late ’83), and did a duet with him on a ballad called It’s Our Time.  They were also supposed to produce together a solo album on Terry Bradford (www.terrybradford.com).  “We knew Terry, but he was under Philip Bailey’s production company, Holy Sound Productions.  I formed a Christian gospel production company called Gateway Music House.”

LOVE WON’T LET ME WAIT

The other duet on the album was a melodic and poppy mid-pacer titled So Deep in Love, which Deniece recorded with her dear recording partner from five years back, Johnny Mathis.  As mentioned already in the second part of the story, they sang together also on Without Us.  “It was a theme song for ‘Family Ties’, a show that starred Michael Fox.  The theme song is still on television somewhere today.  Two years ago Johnny and I did ‘The TV Land Music Award Show’, and we got a chance to sing it again, because it was one of the best songs from one of the largest television shows to run for an X amount of years.”

In early 1984 Columbia released as a single one more duet from Deniece and Johnny, Love Won’t Let Me Wait (b/w Lead Me To Your Love; # 32-black, # 106-pop).  “I enjoyed doing it with him, and he was so excited to do the song.  And, of course, that song is written by Bobby Eli.”

Those days Deniece married Brad Westering, who would also become her musical partner.  “I had two more sons, Forrest and Logan.  Forrest was born in 1988 and Logan was born in 1991.”  Deniece was dreaming about another career in cosmetology, too.  “We started the cosmetics line, but, once again, my attention was paid to my children, and to my home, but that still is a project on the back burner.”

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE BOY

When Deniece talks about “one of the largest songs in my career“ above, she means an infectious and energetic dancer called Let’s Hear it for the Boy, a song from the motion picture Footloose.  Written by two movie script and song writers, Tom Snow and Dean Pitchford, and produced by George Duke, the single hit number one both on Billboard’s pop and black charts in June 1984 and went platinum.  Deniece: “It was a very different song for me.  I hadn’t sung anything like Let’s Hear it for the Boy.  I read a lot of articles that were saying that I was an incredible balladeer, and I wanted to show the world and show myself that I could do an uptempo pop song – and we succeeded!”  Interestingly, according to Dean Pitchford, Deniece’s first take on the song was too girlish, so they had to call her from a gig on the East coast back to Los Angeles, and the second time she nailed it right away.

The ensuing album was also entitled Let’s Hear it for the Boy (Columbia 39366; # 10-black, # 26-pop), and Deniece co-wrote five songs out of the ten on the album.  She also produced six tracks, leaving four to George.  George was in charge of the next single, too, the pulsating and melodic Next Love (# 22-black, # 81-pop), which the two co-wrote together.

BLACK BUTTERFLY

A beautiful ballad with uplifting lyrics named Black Butterfly wasn’t such a big hit (# 22-black), but gradually it has become one of Deniece’s signature songs.  It was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.  “They had actually sent it to George Duke, and George was holding it.  He didn’t have in mind any artist that he was working with at the time that could do the song.  When he and I got together and we did Footloose and I asked him to do the next project, he remembered the song and sent it to me.  I instantly fell in love with the message behind the song and what it said.”  George’s fourth production on the album was a rock track titled Haunting Me.

Deniece produced three fast (Pick up the Pieces, Blind Dating, Wrapped Up) and three slow tracks for the album.  Among the downtempo ones there’s the ethereal I Want You, the beaty Don’t Tell Me We Have Nothing and a hymn called Whiter than Snow.  The CD releases from Sony of both I’m So Proud and Let’s Hear it for the Boy hit the stores in 1990.

By that time there were already three artists signed to Deniece’s production and management companies.  “We had one artist to make it, and his name was Michael Peterson ( www.michaelpetersonmusic.com), and strangely enough he has done very, very well in country & western music (laughing).  He’s got a couple of Grammy nominations.  He was the most successful at our production company.  With the other two artists it didn’t work out.”

WISER AND WEAKER

We had to wait for two years, before a new single finally hit the streets in the summer of 1986.  An aggressive rock belter called Wiser and Weaker was unlike anything Deniece had cut earlier.  The public, however, didn’t seem to accept it, since it reached only # 60-black.  Written by Deniece, Fritz Baskett and Greg Mathieson, the latter also produced and arranged it.  Greg ( www.gregmathieson.com) had arranged I’ve got the Next Dance for Deniece already in 1979.  “Greg Mathieson was doing a lot of arranging and writing with David Foster.  He was also doing a lot of writing with Chicago.  We’d met before at various junctions and fairs, and I would like what he was doing, and that’s how he and I finally got together and decided to try to do something.”

Greg produced and arranged the ensuing album, Hot on the Trail (Columbia 40084; # 58-black), and this time Deniece co-wrote as many as seven songs out of the eight on it.  The second single from the LP, the delightful and rich Healing (# 76-black), was one of the only two slowies on the set.  The second one was a beat ballad named We’re Together.  The rest is mostly disco music and some rock.  He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not is the catchiest of them.  The title tune, which is one of the disco dancers, was co-produced by Jay Gruska and Deniece’s new husband, Brad Westering.

“It was very, very different.  At the record label there was a big argument that would keep going on that she’s an r&b artist but she’s selling pop.  And the pop department would say that she may sell pop, but she’s an r&b artist.  They couldn’t just make up their minds.  I kind of kept getting tossed around.  But also it was exciting for me, because my taste for music was all over the board, too.  Basically, they were trying to figure me out, but I got to work with some pretty interesting people” (laughing). 

I SURRENDER ALL

Although Deniece had recorded one inspirational song on almost each of his secular albums, it wasn’t until 1986 that she released her first full-length gospel album, So Glad I Know (Sparrow 1121; # 8-gospel).  Those days also Philip Bailey started releasing gospel sets on Word (The Wonders of His Love, Triumph, Family Affair).  Produced this time by Brad Westering alone, Jay Gruska and Greg Mathieson took the roles of arrangers.  Interestingly, there are some of the same musicians as on Hot on the Trail, such as Paul Jackson Jr. on guitar and Freddie Washington on bass.  “When you’re in the industry, you make friends along the way and you meet people that are appropriate for you, regardless of what you’re doing.  Some of the musicians say ‘what ever you want to do, if you need my help, give me a call’, so that’s what I did.”

So Glad I Know is stronger, more versatile and enjoyable set than Hot on the Trail.  Musically it’s like one of Deniece’s subtle secular albums, only with another kind of message.  “In our hearts and minds it was music with a different expression – lyrical, of course.  We felt in our commitment to God and Jesus Christ why would we do any less in quality for our belief than we would do for anything else.”

Among the goodies there’s a beat ballad called My Soul Desire and the title tune, which is a melodic and poppy ditty.  Chaka Khan co-wrote a scorcher named What You Do For Me.  Highlights, however, are the two songs that won Grammys.  In the category “Best Gospel Performance By A Duo Or Group, Choir Or Chorus” Deniece and Sandi Patti won with They Say, the same song Deniece had cut with Philip Bailey three years earlier.  A dramatic and emotive ballad called I Surrender All won Deniece her second Grammy in the category “Best Soul Gospel Performance, Female.”  “I Surrender All is just a traditional hymn that has been around for many, many years.  It was an older traditional gospel song that I gave a new version.  A lot of the church people knew the song, loved the song and was just excited to hear it to get a new life.”

NEVER SAY NEVER

Deniece travelled all the way to London to record her next album with Steve Levine (www.stevelevine.co.uk).  “That was the recommendation from the record label.  I thought ‘well, some incredible music has come out of there… why not, let’s see’.  It wasn’t my recommendation, but they thought that my going over there and working with producer Steve Levine would be a great combination, so we went for it.”

For Water under the Bridge (Columbia 40486, 1987; # 39-black) Deniece co-wrote four songs out of ten, but unfortunately in instrumentation machines dominate.  A poppy mover called Never Say Never turned into a top-ten hit (# 6-black), and it was followed by I Confess (# 24-black), a light and catchy dancer with some Latin touch to it.  There are five nice ballads (Water under the Bridge, Not By Chance, I Believe in You, Baby This Is Love and Don’t Blame It on My Heart) and five uptempo melodic, albeit more superficial pop tunes.  With I Believe in You Deniece won her third Grammy in the “Best Gospel Performance, Female” category in 1987.  “I was really surprised.  That song I wanted to do in order for people to have a real feel of me as an artist and as a person that they would know about my gospel music side.  It was a beautiful song and obviously touched the heart of a lot of people.”

I CAN’T WAIT

There were as many as three production units on As Good As It Gets (Columbia 44322, 1988; # 48-black).  “At this time again we were just exploring various musicians, various producers and various music styles.”  George Duke produced a poppy Skylark-written dancer titled I Can’t Wait, which did quite well for Deniece on Billboard’s charts (# 8-black, # 66-pop).  “That was George Duke’s idea.  I loved it.  I thought it was just an incredible song, and the video that we shot… I remember the cutest part about that was when I went to Japan, to Tokyo, and when I did that song, a little Japanese girl jumped up and started doing the moves from the video.  I just cracked up.  They were sitting there all quiet, hadn’t said a word and all of a sudden they start doing the dance moves with me” (laughing).

George produced also a powerful ballad Memories - written by Deniece and George – and on this particular track Philip Bailey is on background again.  An enchanting beat ballad named This Is As Good As It Gets (# 29-black) was produced by Brad Westering and Jay Gruska, who also cut We Are Here to Change the World, co-written by Michael Jackson.  This gospel beater has Ray Parker Jr. on guitar and the Andrea Crouch Singers on background.  “Michael did the song in Captain EO, I think, by Disney.  I really loved the song, so I called Michael and he gave me the permission to do it.”

The Westering & Gruska twosome produced also a beat ballad titled I Am Sure, which has a 3-month-old Forrest Matthew Westering on the background, while a reggae-beat track called Hold Me Tight (not the Johnny Nash hit) has a little older Phil Perry doing backup vocals.

Monte Moir concentrates on programming on the three tracks he produced for the album, and on the tender It’s You I’m After there’s one Howard Hewett singing together with Deniece.  “Howard and Philip are my friends.  We loved performing with each other.  We have high regard and respect for each other’s talent.”

EVERY MOMENT

Brad alone produced Deniece’s second inspirational set, Special Love (Sparrow 1174, 1989; # 11-Top Contemporary Christian), which in terms of music contains some gospel disco and funk this time.  Jay Gruska did most of the arranging.  Among the six ballads there’s that delightful Healing again from three years back, and on some of the tracks Phil Perry is singing background once more.  “I love Phil Perry’s voice.  He’s incredible.  I knew his wife.  She was one of the background singers with Ramsey Lewis.  Ramsey was also a part of the family with Maurice White, and I met her.  So I met Phil and we became friends.”

Natalie Cole does a duet with Deniece on a powerful ballad called We Sing Praises.  “I’ve known Natalie through the music industry.  We’d be performing near each other, especially when we’re in Las Vegas.  She’d be in one of the casinos, I’d be in another.  I’d go over to her shows, she’d come over to mine.  I had this song, and Natalie had just went through a wonderful, wonderful recovery at that time and wanted to just sing a song like that.  So we did it.”  The album produced one charted single, too, as in late ’89 a swaying beat ballad named Every Moment peaked at # 55-black.

LULLABIES

In 1991 Deniece released a CD called Lullabies to Dreamland (Word 48780), and they also published a book by the same title.  The idea was born for the first time some fourteen years earlier with Linda Creed and Bruce Roberts.  “Lullabies was for my younger two sons.  I didn’t like ‘Rockabye baby’ and ‘When the tree breaks the cradle will fall’, so I just started to write my own lullabies for my children and for the children of the world… something that would be peaceful and positive and encouraging for them, something to go asleep to, and that’s how that project came about.  I’m now in the studio re-recording that project for release in 2008.”

Also in 1991 Sparrow released in a CD format a compilation titled From the Beginning (Sparrow 1256; # 35-Top Contemporary Christian), which featured twelve inspirational songs compiled from Deniece’s earlier albums.  After that, on the recording front there became a five-year silence.  “I had small children and I had a bad divorce and I was just growing tired.  I wasn’t recording.  I was actually doing theatre.  I went to London to do ‘Mama I Want to Sing’ (in the mid-90s) and we went to Japan.  When the Japanese piece ran out, I went back to London, and it was at that time when a producer from Radio 2 for the BBC approached me about a radio show.  I did the radio show for BBC for nine years.  I lived in London for almost three years.  When I left, I went to the BBC and my producer and told him I’d hope he finds another host.  They said ‘that’s okay, we’ll make it work from you going back to the United States’, so I continued even five years after I left.  My producer would come here, and we got those radio shows done.”

LOVE SOLVES IT ALL

Produced and for the most part written by Deniece, Alan Glass and Andrew Klippel, Deniece’s next CD, Love Solves It All (P.A.R. 2264, 1996), was again cut and programmed in London.  There are two dancers and four mid-pacers, and among those four melodic mid-tempo songs there’s Stop a Tear from Falling Down, a track with a Caribbean beat, and here Deniece does a duet with Brinsley Ford.  There’s even a short rap by Solomon on it – a new “conquest” for Deniece.

“This also was during the time, when I was trying to figure out what I was doing.  Someone approached me about doing this project, and I said ‘why not.  I’m on radio.  I’m not doing any singing’.  Of course, it’s not the best project I ever did, and I think it’s just indicative of being a very hard time for me personally, still having children being responsible for and in a foreign country.  We shared the same language, but it’s a very different culture, and I was there alone – single parent with children.  That’s not my best project, but I’m surprised, the emotional state that I was in, that I even got it done.”  On those melodic mid-tempo and (four) slow songs some of the old magic is preserved.  A hymn called Great Is Thy Faithfulness Deniece does a cappella. 

Besides this new CD, a lot of compilations were released those days.  In 1994 Sparrow put out a twelve-tracker titled Greatest Gospel Hits and a year later Sony gave us Change the World, a ten-song CD.  The best compilation, Gonna Take a Miracle: the Best of Deniece Williams (Legacy 64839; # 85-r&b), consists of sixteen popular and best loved songs in Deniece’s career and it hit the streets in 1996.

THIS IS MY SONG

Deniece wrote or co-wrote all ten songs for her next gospel CD, This Is My Song (Harmony 1655, 1998; # 14-Top Gospel), which was produced by Deniece and Raina Bundy.  “Raina Bundy works as the CEO of Harmony Music.  I’ve known Raina for many, many years.  She’s been in gospel music, but she’s been also in the secular music industry.  When I came back, she was very interested in me getting into the studio and doing this project, so I said ‘okay, why not’!  I worked with a wonderful producer and arranger, Loris Holland.”

In terms of music the CD represents a mixture of pop and r&b.  There are some pretty tunes among the six ballads, such as the blooming Lover of My Soul, Prodigal Sons and Daughters and I Love Him Above All Things.  The CD also earned Deniece her fourth Grammy in the category of “Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album” in 1998.  “It was a total surprise again, because my project was up against some projects that were just incredible.”  In 2000 Sony released one more compilation of fourteen songs titled Love Songs.

   Prior to her latest CD, Love Niecy Style, which we covered in the first part of the story, Deniece has appeared in many television shows

Joy, the Evolution of Gospel Music in 1999,

The Deniece Williams & Friends Mother’s Day Special in 2000,

– a Christmas special named Love’s Pure Light in 2006 and

Celebrity Duets with Alfonso Ribeiro in 2006. 

She has carried on with her acting, too, in such plays as Looking for Mr. Do Right, All Men Can’t Be Dogs, If You Don’t Believe and God Is Trying to Tell You Something

There are DVD appearances as well.  She sings in a ’85 movie Lace II, and she’s one of the artists on the DVD Hallelujah Gospel from 1982, singing God Is Amazing.  Deniece also appears in a 2003 film Christmas Child

In 2003 she launched a radio show on KKLA in Los Angeles called The Deniece Williams Show.  She has songs on some “various artists” compilations, such as Do You Hear What I Hear on a CD titled All I Want for Christmas (on Tempo Inc.) and O Holy Night on Tis the Season (on Encoded Music in ’97).  She recorded Thine Is the Kingdom in 2007, which is available for download (on Amazon and a couple of other sites).

GRATEFUL

In October 2007 Deniece made a comeback on charts.  Together with Wanda Vaughn (an Emotions lady, earlier known as Hutchinson) and Sherree Brown, she hit # 40 on “Billboard Adult R&B Singles” chart with a song called Grateful (the Redication) on Playground Records ( www.pgrrecords.com), which is a medley of The Best of My Love, Free and Ain’t Nobody.

In 2007, October 13 was declared the “Deniece Williams Day” in Gary, Indiana.  Today Deniece still is an active follower of music and new trends.  “I like Jill Scott.  She doesn’t remind me of anybody else.  I like Musiq (Soulchild).  I like John Legend.  There are just a few artists that I really like that I think have staying power.  And I love Alicia Keys.”

Not only in following today’s music, Deniece keeps on being active in many fields.  “I’ve just finished writing a new book, which will be published soon, and it’s called Mommy, Your Daddy Divorced Me Too.  Other than that, I take one day at a time and I’m going to breathe (laughing).  I’ve been in the studio with my 19-year old Forrest.  He has a group called Keyz2Poetry.  My 16-year old Logan is going to do a rap CD.  He’s a part of a duo named Gameboi and Rico.  My oldest sons and I have written two film projects. We have some investors interested in financing our first film to start production in 2008.”


Heikki Suosalo

Deniece Williams Story Part 1
Deniece Williams Story Part 2
Deniece Williams Album Discography


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