b. 13 October 1938, Durham, North Carolina, USA. A deeply spiritual and affecting gospel singer, Caesar’s emotive vocals were first discovered in a church choir when she was 10 years old. Through her teenage years and early 20s she toured widely through the Carolinas and Virginia in the company of choirs such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, Gospel Harmonettes and Mahalia Jackson. She was best known, however, for her work with the Caravans, whom she begged to join after initially deputizing for Inez Andrews at a local performance. She stayed with the group for eight years.
Electing to pursue a solo career in 1966, alongside her own choir the Caesar Singers, she has subsequently carved out a profile that has made her the natural successor to Mahalia Jackson. Live, she is one of the great evangelical audience-rousers, a reputation that has not always transferred to record, where her spirituals can appear hectoring. After a series of recordings for the Hob Records label in the late 60s and early 70s, Caesar made her debut for Roadshow in 1977 with First Lady, a title that embraced her standing as ‘the first lady of gospel’. Unlike others within the field, Caesar left it comparatively late in her career before moving from devotional interpretations to a more contemporary Christian R&B style. She has collaborated widely, a process seen to best effect on duets with Al Green, including ‘Sailing On The Sea Of Love’, which won her one of her 11 Grammy Awards. Probably the best demonstration of her technique came via her joint 1988 release with Rev. Milton Brunson and Albertina Walker for CBS Records, where the exhortations to her maker could be heard in their natural, live church setting.
Several of Caesar’s 90s albums for the Word label were more R&B-focused, but she returned to a more traditional approach with 1995’s Live... He Will Come. By this stage Caesar’s roll-call of achievements included 10 Stellar awards, eight Dove awards, and a Soul Train Music award. In the early 00s she launched Shu-Bel Records, making her debut for the label in 2005 with I Know The Truth. She has also appeared on Broadway in the Mama I Want To Sing series, and continues her religious teachings as pastor of the Mt. Calvary Word Of Faith Holy Church. Caesar published her autobiography in 1998.
