Rita Coolidge

Cherokee

By J. Poet

Photography by Murrae Haynes

I sang before I spoke. Rita Coolidge said.

The nationally renowned singer had just returned to her home in Fallbrook a small community outside San Diego, from a brief fishing vacation in Alaska with her parents. Coolidge spoke with INDIAN ARTIST while preparing for a round of performances in the Southwest with Walela, the singing trio she founded with her sister Priscilla Coolidge and Laura Satterfield, Priscilla’s daughter.

My mother told me I used to sit in a chair in the living room and hum melodies, Coolidge went on. She said I preferred singing to talking, so I don’t remember learning to sing. It was something I always did.

Rita’s father, Dick Coolidge, was a Cherokee preacher in the Baptist Church, and her mother, Charlotte Stewart, was Cherokee and Scotch. We grew up more in the non-Indian world, in the hills of Tennessee, she said. We weren’t the minority; we were the only Indian people in town. My mom met Daddy in Nashville at college, and when she came home, the locals said, ‘Charlotte’s married a gypsy.’ I always felt we were different, and we were aware of our Native ancestry from an early age, but Dad said the teachings of Jesus and Native tradition were not in conflict; that the wars of the world were carried on by people, not by Jesus.

Rita and her sisters, Priscilla and Linda, were all powerful singers, as were both her parents, so the girls did not have to endure the anti-musical propaganda that many musicians have to face.  “I was singing close harmony with my sisters in church when I was two,” Coolidge said.  “And later on, we had solo spots during the service.  Since my father and mother and grandmothers all sang, music was a natural part of our lives, just like sleeping and eating.”

Although the family lived on the reservation, Coolidge and her sisters spent a great deal of time with their grandmothers, who were both singers, storytellers, healers, and keepers of traditional Cherokee lore.

I think my father’s mother, Grandma Bessie, was in denial about her Indian blood, which was common in those days, Coolidge said. But when she visited, she’d take us out in the woods and show us rocks and plants.  She knew all the herbal lore and did healings, but she didn’t talk about the traditional aspects of it.”

Mama Stewart, who was my mother’s mother, was a singer and storyteller. She kept the family history by writing songs. She wrote songs about her family and her journeys as a young girl in the 1870’s and the lives of her children and songs about us, her grandkids.  She also sang the old mountain songs like ‘Amazing Grace,’ which is probably the first complete song I ever learned, and one of the songs I love most in my life.  She passed about 15 years ago, at age 104, and the doctor who performed the autopsy said she had the arteries of a 12 year-old. She stayed healthy and happy and productive’til the end, which is a goal I’ve set for myself.

When Coolidge was 15, the family moved to Florida, where Rita finished high school and enrolled in Florida State University as an art major.  She started singing professionally in college to help put herself through art school.  “Art was an expensive major,” Coolidge laughed.  “My parents helped out, but they’ve never had a lot of money, so I started singing to help support myself.”  Coolidge played at fraternity parties and fronted a folk group for a while, but soon she decided to move to Memphis to try to raise money for her master’s degree.

I was lucky enough to land a job at Pepper Records, a jingle factory that did maybe 75 percent of the radio spots in the Southeast.  I was doing call letters and some commercials, but it was a great education.  I learned how to sight read and how to transfer the piano theory I already knew to my vocals, to be able to jump in and sing a note that’s a half step higher than the other voice to produce a jazz cluster.”

While she was in Memphis, Coolidge hung out with Don Nox, who went on to become a legendary session player.  He told her to move to California and look up his friends Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett.

What can I say about the rock lifestyle in L.A. in the 70’s?, Coolidge mused.  ‘It was a golden time.  The Eagles were just getting together, Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt were hitting their stride, and everyone was making fabulous music.  Some nights when I am all alone, watering the yard, I think back on those days and…”Her voice trailed off.  “… I guess some part of me is still living in the ‘70’s.”

Coolidge clicked with the Bramletts and did backing vocals on their groundbreaking DELANEY AND BONNIE AND FRIENDS album.  They introduced her to Joe Cocker and Leon Russell, who invited her to join their “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tour, where her solo spot – a show stopping rendition of the Russell-Bramlett tune “Superstar” – rocketed her into the international spotlight.

In the early 1970’s, Coolidge signed to A&M Records and became a star in her own right with a powerful sound that mixed the best parts of gospel, pop and country music.  But even though she was part of the group that pioneered the sound later known as country rock, the lion’s share of the kudos went to The Eagles and the Flying Burrito Brothers.  “The country was there, but my approach was always a bit more R&B and rock,” Coolidge said.  And since I’m a girl, I got lumped in with Linda and Bonnie, even though I was selling platinum.

In the mid 1970’s, Coolidge met and married country songwriter Kris Kristofferson, and their careers both as a duo and individually reached amazing heights.  Coolidge amassed an armload of gold and platinum albums and singles, as well as two Grammys for the best country duet that she shared with Kristofferson.

After all the time I’d spent rocking and rolling, it was ironic top get a Grammy as a country dinger, she said.  “Some interviewers still ask me what it was like to be the ‘Queen of Country Music,’ but I tell them the title belongs to Tammy Wynette, not me.”

As part of 1970s rock royalty, Coolidge’s face was all over the covers of the leading rock magazines, and she remembered that her popularity brought some pressure to bear on her parents.  “Some of the congregation asked my dad what he thought about the ungodly African rhythms his daughter was involved with,” she said.  “Their answer was that they’d raised me right and I was free to live my own life.”

Although she never used Cherokee language or Native rhythms in her music, Coolidge was always aware of her Indian heritage.  “I looked Native and never hid my heritage,” she said.  “To this day, Native women come up to me and tell me my visibility was an inspiration.”

Coolidge and Kristofferson separated in 1979, but Coolidge never stopped touring and recording.  And for the past 10 years, she’s been exploring ways to reflect her Native heritage in her music.

I wrote a song called ‘Cherokee’ for one of my albums, and invited Priscilla and Laura to sing it with me, she said.  “Robbie Robertson heard it and asked us to sing on his MUSIC FOR THE NATIVE AMERCIANS album.  Those sessions went so well, we knew we had to do something.”

The collaboration was formalized last year when the trio took the name Walela (Cherokee for hummingbird) and cut an album by the same name for Triloka Records.  The album recently won two Nammys (Native American Music Awards), for best album and best single.

We made that [WALELA] album to honor our grandmothers, who had strong musical voices, and we were definitely guided through the process, Coolidge said.  ‘We could feel them around us in the studio as we gave voice to some of the things those old women could never express when they were alive.”

Walela built one track, I’ll Turn My Radio On, around a recording their Grandma Stewart made when she was 90 years old.  “Priscilla and Booker T. recorded her singing her own songs before she died,” Coolidge said, “so 14 years after she passed, her dream of making a record of her songs has finally come true.”

Coolidge has always maintained a heavy touring schedule.  Now that Walela is taking off, she has to balance the dates she has with her regular touring band, as well as her dates and recording sessions with Walela.

We’re in the process of writing and recording the next Walela album, then I’m off for a three week tour of Australia, so I stay busy. Coolidge said.  ‘I’d love to be independently wealthy and have time to garden and visit with friends.  But I’m a working woman, and I always have been.”