Linda Tillery
Linda "Tui" Tillery is an American singer, percussionist, producer, songwriter, and music arranger. She began her professional singing career at age 19 with the Bay Area rock band The Loading Zone. She is recognized as a pioneer in women's music, with her second solo album titled Linda Tillery released on Olivia Records in 1977. In addition to performing, she was the producer on three of Olivia's first eight albums. Within the women's music genre, she has collaborated with June Millington, Deidre McCalla, Barbara Higbie, Holly Near, Margie Adam, and others. Tillery was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1997 for Best Musical Album for Children.
Tillery has been a professional musician for her entire adult life and has had a long career as a backing or supporting vocalist for mainstream artists as diverse as Santana, Bobby McFerrin, Huey Lewis and the News and the Turtle Island String Quartet. In the early 1990s, she began exploring the roots music of enslaved Africans and the African diaspora, forming the group The Cultural Heritage Choir.
Early life
Tillery was born in 1948 to parents who migrated from Texas to San Francisco during World War II. She was born on the block of Fell Street where the SFJAZZ Center currently stands. Her father was a carpenter whose first job after moving to California was at the Hunters Point Shipyard. Her mother was a seamstress and later worked at a job pressing garments in a Chinatown sweatshop.Neither of her parents were musicians, but she had two uncles who played cornet. Tillery says her parents were terrible singers but they loved music and had a large collection of 78 rpm records. The music she heard as a young person in her household ranged from Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan to rural and urban blues. By age 2, her favorite singer was Dinah Washington, whose recording of "That's All I Want From You" was particularly loved by Tillery and was the first song she memorized. Tillery claims that she learned how to read by looking at the labels from her parents' record collection. "Basie was on Verve. Dinah was on Mercury". She had memorized Basie's arrangement of "April in Paris" by age 4. She also admired Ethel Merman's big voice, going into her parents' acoustically-pleasing bathroom and trying to imitate Merman's song "There's No Business Like Show Business".
Tillery is a self-taught singer, but her formal music education began at age 13 when she studied the classical bass at Lowell High School in San Francisco. She was allowed to play the drum kit and other instruments such as the bassoon in school because her teacher recognized her superior musical abilities. Also around age 13, Tillery attended a picnic in Pittsburg, California where she saw Vi Redd playing alto saxophone. Tillery says she was mesmerized by Redd and that experience enlightened her to "be able to play whatever instrument I chose. I wanted to sing, but not just as a centerpiece. I wanted to be a unique voice".
Tillery graduated from high school in 1966 and worked for a year while also attending City College of San Francisco. She says her parents always wanted her to be a business major but she says she "got bored very quickly" with college. She dropped out to begin singing professionally.
Late 1960s: The Loading Zone
Tillery first came to prominence as the lead singer in San Francisco group The Loading Zone starting in 1968. The band had just signed with RCA Records and was looking for a new lead singer, so they placed a classified ad in the San Francisco Chronicle stating "Wanted: One Soul Singer" which was also the title of a Johnnie Taylor album that Tillery enjoyed. At least six singers had auditioned for the job but the 19-year-old Tillery had an edge because she had phoned beforehand to make sure she was what the band was seeking. Years later, Loading Zone founder Paul Fauerso described the hiring of Tillery:She said, 'I'm kind of big, like Big Mama Thornton, and I play harmonica…. She walked through the door in a post office uniform, with little white cat-eyed glasses, and I said, that's our girl. She just looked right. We evolved as a dance band with a fusion of R&B and rock, and we ended up as a psychedelic soul band once we added Linda. She was singing for us by the time we opened for Cream at Winterland. Her mother made her a floor-length ruffled red leather cape. It was very dramatic.
Tillery recalled her audition day with humor. Loading Zone guitarist Steve Dowler went to Tillery's house to pick her up. "Her mother saw a hippie at the door and refused to let him in".
Linda with the Loading Zone frequently played popular Bay Area Night Clubs like Keystone Berkeley, Frenche's in Hayward and The Odyssey Room in Sunnyvale. While The Loading Zone occasionally performed as headliners in concert venues, they were more well known as a popular opening act for other big-name bands. They toured with Vanilla Fudge and The Jeff Beck Group, and opened Bay Area shows for many other bands and performers including The Who on their first American tour, Jethro Tull, Sam & Dave, Cream at San Francisco's famed Winterland Ballroom and Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin at Bill Graham's historic venue The Fillmore. Of the gig with Big Brother, Tillery and the Loading Zone won over Joplin's fans so much that Joplin told others after the show that Tillery was never allowed again to be on the same bill with her.
The Loading Zone's style has been described as psychedelic soul, and they have been compared somewhat to Sly and the Family Stone. Another critic called their music "a distinctive blend of garage rock, R&B, and jazz". Their debut album titled The Loading Zone was released on RCA Records in 1968 and sold about 100,000 copies. Critical reception was mixed, with many dismayed that the album "didn't come close to capturing the band's energy in concert".
Tillery's tenure with The Loading Zone marked the beginning of her professional career. "Though it was at the height of the drug-crazed rock era, the members of the band had all turned to Transcendental Meditation, were completely clean and sober, and were dealing with a lot of political issues that other musicians wouldn't tackle, like confronting the American Federation of Musicians which was not doing a very good job at providing benefits and protections for musicians. It was the beginning of a journey through consciousness-raising and political development for me". Tillery stayed with The Loading Zone a few years, but the lifestyle became "too much, too soon …. I kind of crashed after that….The lifestyle can either make or break a human being. There are some people who are destroyed by their early success. At least I can say I'm a survivor". The group broke up and reformed in 1969, and had varying membership for periods of time in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One account shows that Tillery left the group in January 1969, rejoined in March 1970 through 1971, and left The Loading Zone for the final time in 1972.
1970-1977: Debut solo album and session work
As early as 1968, Tillery was performing as a solo artist around the Bay Area under the name Sweet Linda Divine. She signed with CBS Records and released her debut album titled Sweet Linda Divine in 1970. The album was produced by Al Kooper who also played piano, organ and horns on selected songs. Tillery provided lead vocals and played percussion on the recording, which garnered some enthusiastic reviews but did not sell well. The album earned Tillery two consecutive "Jammies" for Outstanding Female Vocalist.Through much of the 1970s, Tillery worked as a session musician providing backing vocals and occasionally playing drums on albums by Santana, Boz Scaggs, Lenny White, Teresa Trull and others. She sang backing vocals on the Santana III album, including on the hit single "Everybody's Everything" which debuted on the Billboard Hit 100 chart on October 16, 1971, peaked at number 12 and remained on the chart for a total of 10 weeks. She also sang backing vocals on the song "Everything's Coming Our Way" from the same album.
During this time, Tillery was a member of the jazz fusion band Cesar 830, which recorded one album. She was also the lead vocalist for Coke Escovedo's soul/funk/jazz/Latin band, appearing on two albums.
Another group with whom she performed during this period was Jessica Hagedorn's Gangster Choir. The "poet's band" had two distinct incarnations based on Hagedorn's residencies in San Francisco in the 1970s and New York City in the 1980s. Tillery was a member of the West Coast Gangster Choir's vocal trio, the Gangsterettes.
Of this period in her career, Tillery said "Then my education as a hard-working singer began…. I was what I call a '9-to-5 musician' from '70 to '77. Played with a lot of bands, did a lot of club work, only the hours were 9 to 2".
1975-1979: Olivia Records and women's music
Tillery was introduced to Women's music in 1975 when the Bay Area band BeBe K'Roche submitted her name to Olivia Records to produce their album. Tillery produced, arranged, sang backing vocals and played percussion on the 1976 eponymous LP, which was the fledgling record label's third release. In addition to the LP, two singles were released as well. Like most Olivia recordings, the album contains several songs with overt lesbian and/or feminist lyrics, but unlike other early Olivia projects, the style of the music is R&B/funk/jazz and Latin-influenced rock.Tillery joined the Olivia collective, which became "the pioneering label run by the lesbian-feminist collective that made a place for female musicians, engineers, and producers". Tillery and Olivia collective member Judy Dlugacz recruited Sandy Stone as recording and mix engineer on the BeBe K'Roche recording. At the time, Stone was in the early stages of transitioning from male to female. Stone's presence as a transsexual in the Olivia collective caused an uproar in the late-1970s within segments of the lesbian-feminist community, and they threatened a boycott of Olivia products as a result. The Olivia collective defended Stone in multiple feminist publications, but after long debate, Stone left the collective in 1979.
Tillery's next job with Olivia Records was producing Teresa Trull's debut album titled The Ways A Woman Can Be. Released in 1977, this album also contained overt lesbian/feminist lyrics. In addition to producing, Tillery played drums and contributed supporting vocals to the recording.
Also in 1977, Olivia released the compilation album Lesbian Concentrate in response to Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade. Tillery contributed the song "Don't Pray For Me" to the LP, which was composed by Mary Watkins. This song has been recognized by scholars as one of the first songs to directly challenge homophobia.
Later in 1977, Olivia Records released Tillery's second solo album, titled Linda Tillery. Tillery was the lead producer, with co-producer credits to bassist Diane Lindsay and keyboardist/string and horn arranger Mary Watkins. It featured Tillery on lead and supporting vocals, drums and percussion, and marked the first time that Tillery, Watkins, and vocalist/vocal arranger Vicki Randle appeared together on an album. Like all Olivia projects at the time, all of the musicians as well as technical staff were female, including Sandy Stone as recording engineer. The album included a slightly longer version of "Don't Pray For Me", as well as two songs with overt lesbian lyrics: "Womanly Way" and "Wonderful", the latter of which was the first song composed entirely by Tillery. The song "Freedom Time", co-written by Tillery and Watkins, brings attention to the problems of being black and female and gay with the lyrics: "If I could just tell you what it's really like/To live this life of triple jeopardy/I fight the daily battles of all my people/Just to sacrifice my pride and deny my strength". This song has been cited as influential in scholarly studies of black feminism and in feminist journals. In a 1978 review in the radical feminist journal off our backs, the style of the album Linda Tillery is described as "characteristically jazz/rock fusion with her clean, funky drumming and excellent interplay between among bass, drums, and keyboards. Combined with the music is a message of lesbian strength, struggle and pride". The album earned Tillery a Bammie.
In fall 1978, Olivia Records produced the "Varied Voices of Black Women" national tour in response to an all-white lineup of an earlier "Women on Wheels" tour, as well as to promote Olivia artists. The Varied Voices tour played in eight cities and featured Tillery, Mary Watkins, Gwen Avery, Vicki Randle, and poet Pat Parker and brought poetry as well as jazz and blues to women's music audiences. It also exposed audience members to an empowering lesbian culture that was emerging across the USA and it "demonstrated that white lesbians were not the only ones creating a new women's culture: Though the concert was first and foremost a celebration of Black lesbian feminist identity and culture, it was also an attempt to broaden the white feminist community's understanding of feminist and lesbian identity…. Varied Voices was a watershed event in the history of black women and women-identified music". The film Radical Harmonies documents the history of women's music, and includes a segment on the Varied Voices tour. In the film, musician June Millington describes seeing the performances at the time: "You've never seen anything like it. They really did present this hot, hot, HOT show. And either you really fell into … the well or some people were repelled … because it was almost too much. But that's the good news, because they were groundbreaking".
Linda Tillery was the only album she released on Olivia Records, and Tillery left the collective in 1979. In an interview years later, Tillery described her Olivia experience: "I was quite happy to be in an environment where I could observe other women in the creative process and also in the administrative process because all of my experience up to that point had been working with men. The Loading Zone was nine: me and eight white men; every other band I was in was me and six men, me and five men, me and four men. I had never worked with any women musicians". In a 2020 interview in The Guardian, Tillery said "I'm so thankful for what Olivia did for me and for other women. Suddenly there was this feeling of hope that our lives could be lived safely in a relationship of our choosing."
Tillery has referred to herself as the "queen mother" to women's music, to both deflect the tendency of some to look upon her as a sex object, as well as to recall the term's honorific association in some African cultures.