Touring as a Harlette with Bette had put me in greater demand. I was happy to finally start getting the attention for my work that I felt I deserved. I was asked to do one-woman shows at popular venues in New York City such as Sweetwater’s, Freddy’s, and the Red Parrot. I was everywhere.
The performance at Sweetwater’s earned one of the few bad reviews I’ve ever gotten. The writer for Variety said, among other things, that I used too many props to get my point across.
JOURNAL ENTRY: Kiss my black ass.
I found the review meaningful. I learned something about simplicity from the critic. Small things such as knowing when and how to use your body alone to convey a message makes the difference between an amateur and a professional.
I did a New Year’s Eve show at Don’t Tell Mama. I knew I had to be good that night. It cost $50 to get in, and that was a big deal.
I woke up on New Year’s Day 1984 with my head banging and my face feeling like it was made of cement. Peter, a bassist I’d been flirting with, called at 6 a.m. to wish me happy New Year! I went back to sleep till 2 p.m., when Tyrone came by. We watched the Orange Bowl, and let’s just say Tyrone made it to the end zone more than once. He was going down on me during halftime when Peter and Ken called. And yes, to answer your question, I picked up both times. I loved to push the limits—fucking one guy while talking with two others was a complete power trip for me. Thomas called twice and hung up before finally leaving a message. The neighbor next door banged on the wall and shouted for us to keep it down. Being in my twenties, how could I possibly keep it down?
June, a friend of my friend Temi in Boston, introduced me to an agent in Washington, DC named Jim Keppler, who owned a successful speakers’ bureau. Keppler encouraged me to develop a solo show that he could book at colleges during Black History Month. I started to work on an idea for a one-woman show I called From Billie to Lena with Jenifer that would pay tribute to great African American women singers whose lives and art had inspired me.
I spent weeks doing research at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Every contemporary African American singer—Toni Braxton, Beyoncé, Rihanna, and, of course, my li’l Brandy—stands on the shoulders of genius women whose artistry and struggle, I feared, were becoming lost in the tide of history. I chose seven women: Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters, Mahalia Jackson, Dinah Washington, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, and Lena Horne. God knows I wanted to include them all—Gladys, Nina, Patti, Natalie—but the show was only one hour long!
I listened to dozens of songs written or recorded by each singer, ultimately choosing not their most popular songs, but songs that seemed to offer special meaning for the singer or that gave insight into her character. For instance, rather than Tina’s “Proud Mary,” I sang “Show Some Respect,” and whereas Billie’s “Strange Fruit” had become iconic, instead I sang “T’Ain’t Nobody’s Business.” Mahalia laid the foundation for gospel music with “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” but I instead chose to sing “Trouble of the World.” (Years later, on the set of Touched by an Angel, Della Reese, who was close with Mahalia, told me that this was in fact the perfect song.)
It was not my goal to imitate the singing styles of my subjects in From Billie to Lena. Instead, I sang the songs my way while framing them with monologues that dramatized the women’s lives and struggles. The show was pretty serious, even somber, especially when I spoke of the hardships and racism the women had faced. But there were plenty of fun parts too, like during Dinah’s “Evil Gal Blues,” when I splayed myself onto the piano, threw one leg in the air, and sang, “I’m a evil gal, don’t you mess around with me; I’m gonna empty your pockets and fill you with misery!” Dinah had sewn mink coats and always carried a gun.
In February 1984, I took to the road with From Billie to Lena with Jenifer. My first booking was at North Greenville University, a small Christian university in North Carolina. It literally was the first time I had performed before an audience made up entirely of strangers. No gypsies. No relatives. No fans. Was I really as good as I thought? Who would start the applause? I hardly even knew Billy McDaniels, my genius pianist. It was quite possibly the first time I was actually nervous before going on stage!
The show was well received. Mark Brown cowrote the show’s monologues, and I am eternally grateful to him for creating a meaningful show that entertained and educated college audiences for a full decade of Black History Months. After every performance, I held a question-and-answer session with the students. This was my favorite part, because I got to relax and just be myself. There might be a question or two about the show, but mostly the students wanted to hear about how I had “made it.” I must have seemed like an exotic bird to these college kids, with my big ’80s hair teased to the ceiling, my sequined gold lamé Don Klein jumpsuit, caked blue eye shadow, and extreme liquid black eyeliner. Many of the students came from small, rural towns and had never visited New York or met a professional entertainer.
I enjoyed sharing with them what I had learned and seen of the world. I wanted them to know the importance of finding their passion, working hard to fulfill their dreams, being good citizens, and, above all, giving back to those less fortunate.
I crisscrossed the United States doing From Billie to Lena with Jenifer mostly at rural schools. Billy and I flew in raggedy propeller planes that served small cities. I always did my best to go through St. Louis to gorge on some of Mama’s fried jack salmon with spaghetti before I had to catch my flight on Allegheny or Ozark Air Lines.
Attending services at Unity and listening to Phil Valentine had expanded my thinking, and I began to explore spirituality on my own. I really wanted to be more connected and to understand life outside of show business. To that end, I experimented with everything that was a part of the New Age Movement. Being among artists meant that I was exposed to all sorts of new ideas. Artists are discontent by nature; we are thrill seekers who are hip and in the know and are often the first to open up to new ways of thinking.
Unity’s philosophy of “say yes,” which had resonated so deeply for me, evolved into a general appreciation for positive thinking after reading The Greatest Salesman by Og Mandino. The book moved me to think about the possibility that I, not an unseen force, was in control of my life. I began to practice the breath of fire technique in Kundalini yoga class and learned to sit still long enough to meditate (no easy task for me, I assure you).