'Our sound engineer got a death threat': how lesbian label Olivia shook up music
It’s the kind of smooth soul groove you can imagine hearing on California FM radio in the late 70s. Bright strings dance over sparkling Fender Rhodes keyboards while an oily talking-bass accompanies a deep, sensuous female voice that would “Like to get to know you / In a special kind of womanly way.”
The song is Linda Tillery’s Womanly Way. Originally released in 1977, it’s one of the standout tracks on the second volume of DJ Supermarket’s The Ladies of Too Slow to Disco, the female-pop-pioneers series that captures the mood of freedom and activism that existed in certain women’s music in the 70s and 80s. It also shines a light on the remarkable story of Olivia Records, a California-based, lesbian-feminist record label launched in 1973, that was owned and operated by women.
“I joined in 1975,” says Tillery, now 71. “And I wrote that song about a woman I was involved with. Before that, I’d ask myself, ‘Am I being my most authentic self?’ Being with Olivia gave me that freedom.”
Olivia Records was set up in Washington DC by, as co-founder Judy Dlugacz put it, “10 young radical, feminist lesbians looking to change the world”. The group included 27-year-old folk singer Meg Christian. “Meg was looking for female artists with great talent who hadn’t reached their potential,” says Dlugacz. “One was a folk singer called Cris Williamson. Meg found out Cris was coming to Washington and asked her do a radio show for us.”
“They were basically looking for a socialist venture in a capitalist world,” says Williamson. “We were talking about sexism in the record industry and I said, ‘Why don’t you start a women’s record company?’ And I swear to God, you saw the light bulb over their heads.”
“The idea became so profound,” says Dlugacz. “We knew music could cut through homophobia and bring strength. We said, ‘This is what we’re gonna do with the rest of our lives.’”
In Christian and Williamson, Dlugacz knew they had the artists – impassioned folk singers with songs of hope, love and unity in the tradition of Joan Baez and Laura Nyro. What they didn’t have was any knowledge of how to run a label. “We were radical lesbian women with strong political backgrounds with the Furies,” says Dlugacz, referring to the DC lesbian separatist group. “Our premise was that everything had to be done by women. Musicians, producers, engineers.”
And it was a success. In their first year, following a relocation to California, Christian’s LP I Know You Know sold 60,000 copies while Williamson’s
The Changer and the Changed exceeded 180,000 – extraordinary figures for an independent grassroots label. “We had word-of-mouth,” says Dlugacz. “Those two albums spoke to women’s lives. They didn’t feel alone any more. It was all about creating a safe place for women, a room of my own, as Virginia Woolf said.”
“I first heard about Olivia when I was asked to produce their all-female rock group, BeBe K’Roche,” says Tillery. The group knew Tillery because she lived locally, in Emeryville, “which was 95% lesbian” but also because she’d been a big name on the late-60s west coast rock scene, as lead vocalist with San Francisco psych-soulers the Loading Zone and then as solo act Sweet Linda Divine.
“I’d seen the racism in the industry,” says Tillery. “But I liked working for Olivia. I was a producer, played drums, sang background vocals. Judy was inviting women of colour into what was then a very white collective. I discovered a lot of straight white women were listening to my music wondering, ‘Should I love a woman?’ But there were others who only wanted to hear music by white women. I realised there was no way my music was going to compete with Meg and Cris.”
One point of solidarity came with 1977’s Lesbian Concentrate LP, a “lesbianthology” of songs and poems by Olivia artists released in response to the Save Our Children anti-gay crusade by 60s pop singer (and brand ambassador for the Florida citrus commission) Anita Bryant. The album featured Olivia’s white folk stars (Christian, Williamson) alongside women of colour: Gwen Avery, Mary Watkins, poet Pat Parker and Tillery. “That was a big statement within the women’s music movement,” says Dlugacz. “It was a very white world. We were keen to promote women who spoke to the African American black woman’s experience of being a lesbian.”
In 1978, Dlugacz organised The Varied Voices of Black Women tour, intended to keep the spotlight on this quartet. “It was me, Mary, Gwen and Pat,” says Tillery. “Loud, raucous black women having a good time. But then this group of radical lesbian separatists called the Gorgons put out a death threat on our sound engineer, Sandy Stone.”
“Someone phoned me,” says Dlugacz, “and said, ‘Do you know Sandy’s a transsexual?’ I had to go back to my radical lesbian collective and explain to them that, yes, she was. But it sat with all of our politics, because she was ‘woman-identified’. She’d given up her privilege as a man to become a woman. But the community had too many problems with that.”
Following targeted attacks on the label by lesbian feminist author Janice Raymond, and boycott threats, Stone left. Olivia continued, funded by annual record sales of around 150,000, but a financial model based on what Dlugacz calls “bootstraps and magical thinking” saw it struggle.
A peak came in 1983, with a 10th anniversary concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall. “Two sold-out concerts back-to-back, 5,600 women, their largest-grossing event to that point,” says Dlugacz. “That was our glass ceiling. It was difficult to continue after that.”
The industry had also changed. Disco and punk had embraced queerness and 80s female artists such as Phranc, kd lang, Michelle Shocked, Tracy Chapman and Melissa Etheridge were able to benefit from the groundwork Olivia records had laid – but on major labels. “Melissa has a rejection letter from Olivia,” says Dlugacz, laughing, “because we couldn’t afford to take on touring rock artists. I decided I couldn’t do it any more. We didn’t have the money.”
Since 1990, Olivia has been run by Dlugacz as a travel company, offering women-only cruises and resort holidays. “Olivia is still about freedom and offering women a safe space,” she says. “Covid has been a challenge, but nothing compared to running a lesbian record company in the early 70s.”
As for Tillery, in the 1990s she began exploring the roots music of African slaves and the African diaspora with her group the Cultural Heritage Choir. She hopes to continue performing with them, once lockdown is over. “I’m so thankful for what Olivia did for me and for other women,” she says. “Suddenly there was this feeling of hope that our lives could be lived safely in a relationship of our choosing. You don’t have to stay with a man you don’t love and be abused.”
The Ladies of Too Slow to Disco 2 is out now.
Those albums spoke to women's lives. They didn't feel alone any more