![]() ![]() Besides providing backing for many Dionne Warwick hits (starting with her debut, "Don't Make Me Over") and Doris Troy's top ten smash "Just One Look," they sweetened the sound on singles by Solomon Burke, Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, Betty Harris, Irma Thomas, Nina Simone and Freddie Scott, Jackie DeShannon's prayer-like pop hit "What the World Needs Now is Love" and too many others to accurately count. ![]() The in-demand foursome spent the next few years singing behind a who's-who of stars. With the addition of Estelle Brown, the act became a quartet and would soon become more familiar to record buyers. She was replaced by Myrna Smith, another home town friend Cissy took over at that time as the group's lead singer. Dee Dee made a few solo recordings (the first: "You're No Good" in the fall of '63) and left around 1965 when her songs started hitting the charts. ![]() Studio work in New York City led to the formation of The Sweet Inspirations with Dee Dee singing lead and Cissy and Sylvia Shemwell (Judy's blood sister) rounding out the trio Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler is credited with coming up with the name, which could be taken as spiritual or secular. In the early '60s Emily, who'd married show business manager John Russell Houston, Jr., took the stage name Cissy Houston and sang with her daughters and their friend, Doris Troy (for awhile they were called The Gospelaires). Then we have their aunt, Emily Drinkard, who spent the longest time doing what she loved (more than 70 years, starting when she sang in public with the Drinkards as a young child in the late 1930s), though much of it was spent as a backing singer.for, inarguably, some of the greatest singing stars of all time. Dionne Warwick amassed a run of hits lasting more than a quarter-century beginning in 1962 younger sis Delia, as Dee Dee Warwick, had a shorter yet eventful career spanning about a decade. But before the Drinkard Singers' standout lead achieved this different kind of notoriety, her sisters (Judy had been adopted by the Warrick family), who sang briefly with the gospel act, embarked on successful pop music careers under a slight variation of the family name. Guions made non-gospel recordings as Judy Clay starting in 1961 and enjoyed several minor hit singles between 19 (duets with male vocal partners seemed to be her specialty as her best-known singles were "Storybook Childen" and "Country Girl - City Man" with Billy Vera and "Private Number" with William Bell). Later that year Joyful Noise, a full studio album by the Drinkard Singers, appeared on RCA Victor by that time they numbered seven (five female voices!), though it's doubtful anyone imagined some of the women in the Drinkard and related-by-marriage Warrick families would go on to long careers and great success on the music industry's high-profile secular stage. They specialized in rousing, energy-filled spiritual tunes like "That's Enough" with lead vocalist Judy Guions from the 1958 album Gospel Singing on Verve Records, a live recording in Newport, Rhode Island released with the Drinkards on one side and another Jersey-based gospel act, The Back Home Choir, on the other. New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey was home base for the fabulously dynamic gospel group The Drinkard Singers, a family act that, as of early 1958, consisted of five members (three women and two men).
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