Linda Hopkins, 92; Tony Award winner

Linda Hopkins, a Tony Award-winning singer and actress, who brought a fullthroated, gospel-driven spirit to her concert performances and long-running Broadway musical shows, died April 10 in Milwaukee. She was 92.

Her death was announced on the website of the New Pitts Mortuary in Milwaukee, where Hopkins had lived in recent years. She had a severe stroke 10 years ago.

Hopkins began performing as a gospel singer in her native New Orleans at age 3, standing on a box to be heard in church. She emulated two singers with huge voices, gospel star Mahalia Jackson and Bessie Smith, known as the Empress of the Blues.

Both strains of music — the divine and the devilish — shaped Hopkins's style and appeal throughout her long career. At age 11, the same year she began singing in a traveling gospel group, Hopkins saw Smith perform and never forgot it.

"This was a year or two before she died," Hopkins told music writer Leonard Feather in 1975. "But when I heard 'Empty Bed Blues' and watched those fringes moving as she swayed on that stage, I sat right up in my seat and said to myself, that's it."

After years performing as a gospel singer, Hopkins began to sing blues and jazz in the 1950s. She also turned to acting, first appearing on Broadway in 1970 in "Purlie," a musical derived from a play by Ossie Davis and set in the Jim Crow South.

In 1972, Hopkins won a Tony Award for best featured actress in a musical for her performance in "Inner City," a retelling of classic fairy tales in an urban setting.

In the mid-1970s, Hopkins returned to one of her early inspirations as the co-writer of "Me and Bessie," a staged tribute to Smith. The production, written with Will Holt, was a one-woman show (except for a pair of dancers) that featured Hopkins's monologues and performances of 26 songs associated with Smith.