The 10 best backing singers | Culture

 Posted on February 10, 2024  |  7 minutes  |  1283 words  |  Aldo Pusey

The 10 best backing singers

As the new documentary 20 Feet from Stardom celebrates unsung musical talents. Jude Rogers picks her own favourites, including a pre-fame Sheryl Crow

Do you think someone is missing from the list? Leave your comment below, and your suggestion could feature in the alternative list next week

@juderogers

Sat 8 Mar 2014 12.05 EST First published on Sat 8 Mar 2014 12.05 EST

  • The Jordanaires

    Backing vocalists are singers whose voices we know but whose reputations are largely unsung, like many of the artists on this year’s Oscar-winning 20 Feet from Stardom. Notably absent from the documentary are the Jordanaires, tenors Gordon Stoker and Neal Matthews, baritone Hoyt Hawkins and bass Ray Walker, who backed Elvis Presley from 1956 to 1970. Their first single with him remained the biggest – Don’t Be Cruel/Hound Dog – and they also introduced him to gospel songs such as How Great Thou Art. They can even be heard burping accompaniment in A Boy Like Me, A Girl Like You. Out of 700 Elvis songs, 361 feature them

  • Darlene Love

    Darlene Love accepted 20 Feet from Stardom’s Oscar by singing gospel favourite His Eye Is on the Sparrow (how joyous was her opening line: “I sing because I’m happy”). Love had been exploited enough in her career. Phil Spector had released two songs sung by her as the work of girl group, the Crystals, in 1963, and also swindled her out of royalties. (In 1998, she won back more then $250,000.) Now best known for 1963 festive classic Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), and her involvement in the Elvis ’68 comeback special, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, supported by Bruce Springsteen

  • Claudia Lennear

    One of Ike and Tina Turner’s Ikettes, Lennear was a powerful voice in the late 60s. She dated Mick Jagger, and is rumoured to have inspired Brown Sugar, as well as David Bowie’s Lady Grinning Soul; later, she sang with Joe Cocker and Leon Russell, and recorded her own ludicrously funky 1973 album, Phew!. One note in 20 Feet of Stardom feels sour to her, though: when University of Southern California professor Todd Boyd compares Ike to a pimp with the Ikettes as his whores. “I didn’t know who he was, but that was a lie. We were treated well and worked hard– how dare he?” A languages teacher since the 1980s, she gives new classes “three weeks before a student finds out who I used to be”

  • Merry Clayton

    Called out of bed, pregnant and in rollers one night in October 1969, Merry Clayton was whisked to LA’s Sunset Sound studios to work with the Rolling Stones. She sings “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away” in the middle of Gimme Shelter, and 20 Feet from Stardom shows her and Jagger listening back separately to the vocal track (Jagger is visibly stunned). She miscarried the next day, and hearing the song used to ail her.; now, she is immeasurably proud of it She also sang on Neil Young’s debut album, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, and, as part of the Brothers and Sisters on Dylan’s Soul, a 1969 Bob Dylan gospel covers LP, being reissued next month

  • Lesley Duncan

    As one of Dusty Springfield’s right-hand women in the 1960s, Lesley Duncan’s warm tones worked well against her friend’s husky lead. She is prominent on Elton John’s early albums (she sings on Tiny Dancer); and, as a songwriter herself, contributed one of her own tracks, the stunning Love Song to his Tumbleweed Connection. She also shared several co-writing credits with Scott Walker, but retired in the late 1970s. She died in 2010. Other Springfield backing singers with subsequent careers include Madeline Bell, in the French disco group Space, and Kiki Dee, who got the 70s success Duncan also deserved

  • Clare Torry

    After hearing Clare Torry’s voice on a cheap Top of the Pops covers album, producer Alan Parsons asked her to sing wordlessly on top of a track for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (1973). Not sure what to do, she pretended to be an instrument. The band made no comment after her performance on The Great Gig in the Sky, so Torry assumed they hadn’t liked it; she didn’t know her vocal had been used until she saw the record in a shop. She was paid £30 for the initial session but won an out-of-court settlement for co-authorship royalties in 2005. She has also sung with Kevin Ayers and Olivia Newton-John

  • Luther Vandross

    Long before he became the high priest of shiny-suited 80s soul, Luther Vandross had been a pivotal member of David Bowie’s backing band. In his early 20s, during the Young Americans sessions, Vandross ended up co-writing a track, Fascination, for the album. In 20 Feet from Stardom, Bruce Springsteen recalls going to a Bowie session at the time, and being won over by Vandross’s rich, warm performance. Vandross also sang with Chic, Diana Ross and Chaka Khan while honing his writing skills on advertising jingles; his first proper single, Never Too Much, became a breakthrough hit in 1981

  • Afrodiziak

    Caron Wheeler, Claudia Fontaine and Naomi Thompson were the backing singers to go to throughout the 1980s. The rousing a cappella opening of the Special AKA’s Free Nelson Mandela is theirs, and they also recorded with the Jam (Beat Surrender), Elvis Costello (Every Day I Write The Book) and Madness (Michael Caine). Wheeler went on to find commercial success as the lead singer of Soul II Soul, Fontaine to sing with Pink Floyd and the Beatmasters, and Thompson to do a track with S’Express. Watch almost any Top of the Pops from the mid to late 1980s, and you’ll hear one or all of them singing magically

  • Sheryl Crow

    Better known now for her stadium-sized country-flecked pop, Sheryl Crow was a backing singer on Michael Jackson’s Bad tour from 1987 to 1989. The Jacksons’ ABC had been the first album she owned and she recently called performing with Jackson “the happiest of times”. Videos of her performing I Just Can’t Stop Loving You with Jackson are plentiful online, Crow’s vocals almost as huge as her frizzy 80s hair. After that, she sang with the likes of Don Henley and Stevie Wonder and on Belinda Carlisle’s 1991 Live Your Life Be Free, before her debut album, Tuesday Night Music Club, became a hit in 1993

  • Denise Johnson

    A new voice in Manchester in the late 1980s, Denise Johnson quickly became recognisable across many indie and dance tracks. This came after a brief but impressive apprenticeship: asked to sing lead for a group supporting US funk band Maze, she played Wembley only weeks after starting out. She sings gloriously on Primal Scream’s Don’t Fight It Feel It from their 1991 classic Screamadelica, and on several tracks from their 1994 follow-up, Give Up But Don’t Give Out. Also a regular performer with Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner’s Electronic, she still tours today with Manchester post-punk legends A Certain Ratio
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