From average kid to disco royalty
Joni Sledge, disco singer: b Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 13, 1956; 1s; d Phoenix, Arizona, March 10, 2017, aged 60.
‘‘We are family,’’ sang Sister Sledge in their 1979 disco anthem. And they were family: Debbie, Joni, Kim and Kathy, although Kathy left in 1989 to pursue a solo career. ‘‘No matter how many times we sing [We Are Family], it always has some kind of freshness to it, I think, because so many people identify – because we all have families or want to be a part of one if we don’t have one,’’ Joni said of the song’s endearing popularity.
Disco music had taken hold with John Travolta’s 1977 hit film Saturday Night Fever and Sister Sledge’s song became a classic of the era, although Joni disliked the term ‘‘disco’’, saying: ‘‘It conjures up all these mechanical studio gimmicks.’’
We Are Family had a distinctive disco beat, but its message was a step beyond the usual disco sentiments, with its rousing call for community, unity and spirit. They received a big boost when We Are Family was appropriated by the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team on their way to a World Series championship win in 1979, with Sister Sledge singing the US national anthem at the opening game.
The sisters sang for everyone, from President Clinton to the Pope, and everywhere from Zaire, where they were part of a warm-up concert for the Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, to the Glastonbury festival, where they lit up the Pyramid Stage in 2005. Their rousing hit became an anthem for many, ranging from LGBT groups around the world to supporters of Hillary Clinton in last year’s US presidential election campaign.
Joni Sledge was born in 1956, a third-generation Philadelphian and the third of five daughters of Edwin Sledge, a Broadway tap dancer, and his wife Florez (nee Williams), a former chorus girl. They divorced in 1964. Carol, the eldest sister, did not take up singing and became a teacher.
The girls owed their vocal training to Viola Williams, their maternal grandmother, who was a former opera singer and protegee of Mary McLeod Bethune, the civil rights activist. Viola had them singing at their local episcopal church. ‘‘She wouldn’t let us get away with just shouting,’’ Joni recalled in 1994. ‘‘She’d say, ’Oh no! Sing that note there.’ ’’
By the age of 3 or 4 they were known as Mrs Williams’ Grandchildren, gaining experience at any tea party or charity event that their grandmother could find. They soon became the Sledge Sisters but at one event the MC had been enjoying too much sauce and introduced them as Sister Sledge. ‘‘We just looked at each other backstage and said, ‘Hey! That’s kind of cool,’ ‘‘ Joni recalled. They prepared for stardom by spraying old 45s with gold paint and hanging them on their walls.
As teenagers they did session work at Sigma Sound, one of the main studios in Philadelphia, and before leaving high school they had some success with Time Will Tell (1971), Mama Never Told Me (1973), which reached the Top 20 in Britain in 1975, and Love Don’t You Go Through No Changes on Me (1974), a hit in Japan.
‘‘We were just average kids, and that weekend we went to Tokyo,’’ Joni said. ‘‘We got off the plane and there were hundreds of Japanese kids in the airport with posters of us.’’
Mother Sledge, who held down several waitressing jobs to pay the bills and would later drive the group’s tour bus up and down the east coast, made sure they did not neglect their education. ‘‘She’s been involved in every facet of our career,’’ said Joni. ‘‘We probably could never have done this without her.’’
In the mid-1970s, even while their careers were blooming, the sisters graduated from Temple University, making them one of the best-educated big female groups in pop-music history.
Yet although their first album, Circle of Love, had been released in 1975, the big time was eluding them. ‘‘The four of us had been in the music business for eight years and we were frustrated,’’ Joni told The Guardian last year, adding that they seriously considered abandoning music and going to law school.
‘‘We’d been working in Atlantic City, four in the afternoon to four in the morning, six sets ... but our record company, Atlantic, didn’t quite know what to do with us.’’ She told how the label boss had made paper dolls of them in his search for inspiration: ‘‘We were all looking at each other, like ... nah.’’
Eventually they teamed up with Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, who had made their band Chic into a top-selling group, with disco songs such as Dance, Dance, Dance. Soon came Sister Sledge’s album We Are Family, with its anthemic title track and songs such as He’s the Greatest Dancer, Lost in Musicand Thinking of You. ‘‘Working in the studio with those guys was a good feeling,’’ Joni said. ‘‘It convinced us not to give up.’’
In the 1980s there was a steady stream of albums, including Bet Cha Say That to All the Girls (1983), the lead single of which featured Al Jarreau, the jazz singer. Lost in Music reached No 4 in the UK, only to be bettered by Frankie, which took the No 1 slot for four weeks in 1985.
Meanwhile, Joni’s marriage to her home-town sweetheart had ended in divorce. She had a son, Thaddeus, who studied at Arizona State University and is now an independent contractor.
By the 1990s she was living in a gated community in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her home was something of a romantic refuge, with long white curtains over large windows and neutral furnishings that served as a canvas for the accessories that she had acquired on her travels, such as a wedding kimono from Kyoto, a courtyard painting from Italy and a handpainted tapestry from Zimbabwe.
Kathy’s departure in 1989 to pursue a solo career led to litigation, which made the lyrics of their most famous song (‘‘I got all my sisters with me’’) seem rather hollow. Debbie, Joni and Kim, who was also an ordained minister, continued as Sister Sledge and during the 1990s enjoyed a number of British successes, including a remix of We Are Family that reached No 5 in 1993. Four years later she developed Voices of Family Ties, a concert and documentary exploring the connection between African and American music.
By the turn of the century Sister Sledge were disco royalty; they performed at Bill Clinton’s final Christmas party at the White House, re-recorded We Are Family with Diana Ross and Patti LaBelle for a 9/11 benefit record and made regular appearances in Britain, including at Brighton Pride, the LGBT festival, last summer.
They entertained the Pope when he visited the World Festival of Families in Philadelphia in September 2015, with film of nuns dancing in the street to We Are Family going viral. ‘‘We’re not Catholics, but we believe in the Pope,’’ quipped Joni. – The Times
‘‘It conjures up all these mechanical studio gimmicks.’’
Joni Sledge on why she disliked the term ‘disco’.