SINGER SHIRLEY WAHLS in the red dress with her namesake group.
Shirley Wahls is a West Helena, Arkansas native but Chicago-based singer who is semi-retired now, but that’s after decades of success in both Gospel and R&B genres.
And we can also add a bit of rock to a career that has endured decades.
She’s another woman that the Chicago Crusader is celebrating to cap off Women’s History Month.
Wahls is known as one of the young pioneers of Gospel music—having been singing in the church since the age of three.
“I loved to sing. I would go to random funerals and sit in the front and ask if folks wanted me to sing,” Wahls said.
She officially began her singing career in the junior choir of the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Chicago initially under the direction of Ruth Jones, better known as Dinah Washington.
Afterward at the age of 25 she sang with a number of groups, including the Dorothy Norwood Singers.
During her collaboration with Norwood, Wahls met Dr. Martin Luther King in the mid-60s and was so inspired that she wrote a song about the Civil Rights Movement in 1969.
The song was “We’ve Got To Keep on Movin’,” Wahls said, adding that Norwood knew Dr. King personally, and they called him “junior.”
“I knew about his work, and it inspired me.” She added that today, Blacks have forgotten. “We have forgotten how much he gave for us, and we should never forget that he’s gone.”
The song urges Blacks to keep on moving, after Dr. King’s assassination. The lyrics, in part: “Put on his dream and keep moving on. It takes me and it takes you to do the things he wanted us to do.”
She cut a handful of secular 45s in the late 60s; the first one titled “Why Am I Crying?” in 1967, which she says is still being played today.
Her 1969 hit “Half The Man” carried the same sort of emotional weight of some of Aretha’s early Atlantic material and may just be the absolute pinnacle of Wahls’ secular recordings.
She recorded an album with the Rotary Connection, a rock group, under the direction of Charles Stepney, to which Minnie Riperton referred her; about four albums with the Argo Singers and one with Gertrude Ward, when Wahls was honored to meet and perform “I Believe” for the late Walt Disney at Disneyland in the mid-60s.
“We had a contract to perform in the theater there that ended up being extended,” Wahls said.
Moreover, when she was in her 20s, she was cautiously advised to turn down a contract to work at Playboy Clubs across the nation. “But I was blackballed for a while in local clubs in Chicago because of this,” she said.
Wahls said a local music associate introduced her to Walter Leavell (Chicago and Gary Crusader founder Balm L. Leavell’s son), when Walter was writing songs, as well as met his sister Judy.
That introduction put her on Garland Green’s 1969 record “Jealous Kind of Fella” as the lady on the other end of the phone who says “hello” and also as a background singer.
Excerpts include:
“What a day, I think I’ll call my baby today. (Hello?) Hello baby, please don’t be too mad at me, because I punched that guy last night. But let me explain, before you say anything.
“I know I was wrong, just like you said. I let that jealousy go straight to my head…I Love you, I’m just a jealous kind of fella.”
Her work with Norwood also led to Wahls traveling across Europe for a number of years beginning in the mid-60s to early 70s.
Because of her success with the Norwood Singers, Wahls was asked by one of the European promoters to organize her group, the Shirley Wahls Singers. They performed together from the mid-90s until around 2010; performing strictly European dates.
She has also performed with the Argo Singers, the Meta Four and Robert Mayes and the Ward Singers.
Her voice has been described as “great and deep, full of fire and emotional strength.”
She noted the phrase: “Your gifts will make room for you,” saying God opened the door for her to be in all these places.
Throughout the years and her illustrious career, Wahls has also done studio work on the Chess label; flown to Canada from Detroit with Ella Fitzgerald’s son; met Sarah Vaughn, Della Reese and Arthur Prysock and enjoyed the benefit of being T-Bone Walker’s cousin.
She added that back then, it was easy to network. “People are not so easy to let you in now, and there is so much other stuff going on. They called it cutthroat then, but it’s ‘body throat’ now.”
Her Gospel hits include. “Oh To Be Kept By Jesus,” “I Made My Vow,” “Down By The Riverside,” “If Jesus Goes With Me” and “Give Me A Clean Heart,” among others.
Throughout her singing career, when she was not performing, her day job was at Encyclopedia Brittanica in downtown Chicago.
Today, Wahls is content to sing in the choir at Christ Universal Temple, where she has been a member since 1982, taking on occasional singing gigs at funerals or weddings.
Elaine Hegwood Bowen, M.S.J., is the Entertainment Editor for the Chicago Crusader. She is a National Newspaper Publishers Association Entertainment Writing’ award winner, contributor to “Rust Belt Chicago” and the author of “Old School Adventures from Englewood: South Side of Chicago.” For info, Old School Adventures from Englewood-South Side of Chicago (lulu.com)