Rhonda Benin’s soul sisters, and recommended gigs

March 21, 2013 2:00 pm by Andrew Gilbert

Rhonda Benin knows that the music biz is unforgiving and that recovering visibility after four months off the scene can easily take twice as long. The Oakland vocalist doesn’t regret her summer-long sojourn in China, where she held down a nightly gig in Hangzhou singing soul, blues and jazz. But she knew that getting back into the groove at home might take some doing, which is why she is producing Wednesday, Mar. 27’s Freight & Salvage vocal extravaganza “Just Like A Woman,” featuring herself, Terrie Odabi, Kellye Gray and Paula Harris, all backed by pianist Tammy Hall’s Lillian Armstrong Tribute Band.

“Working six nights a week steady like that really took me to another level and brought up my live show,” Benin says. “It’s unfortunate that so many black women have got to go out of the country to work. I got offered another contract, but I wanted to come home. I was thinking ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ and that I better come up with something clever. I figured I’d pitch it to Freight & Salvage because they seem to be really open to a diverse array of music.” 

As a singer versed in a vast continuum of African-American musical forms, Benin is practically a festival unto herself. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she worked widely as a session musician, singing background vocals on more than 100 albums. A tour with Maria Muldaur brought her to the Bay Area in 1989 and she decided to stay. Benin credits her experience as a founding member of Linda Tillery’s Cultural Heritage Choir with grounding her in the essential roots of African-American music, from cake walks, field shouts and work songs through spirituals, country blues, and various Caribbean traditions.

“That group taught me to be a musician,” Benin says. “Linda taught me to have integrity with my band, how to be a leader, what to perform. She pushed me out of my R&B life into jazz and folk and Latin and reggae, and changed my whole scope.”

Terrie Odabi: devoted following

A tireless champion in the fight for the recognition of black music’s centrality to American (and international) culture, Benin wages the struggle as an educator, artist and engaged citizen. Launching her own band, she created Soulful Strut, a vehicle for exploring her love of the great jazz and soul stars of the 1950s and ’60s, “somewhere between R&B and jazz, closer to Dinah Washington than to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan,” she says.

Like many of the best singers in the Bay Area, such as Kim Nalley, Denise Perrier and Frankye Kelly, Benin built Soulful Strut around Tammy Hall, and it’s no surprise that she called on the conservatory-trained jazz pianist for “Just Like A Woman.” Conceived as a celebration of Women’s History Month, Wednesday’s concert is designed to showcase each performer’s particular gifts, while focusing on songs either written by female composers or indelibly linked to women performers. The antithesis of a diva, Benin digs the idea of sharing the spotlight with her equally formidable peers.
Read more: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2013/03/21/soul-sisters/