Tag Archives: singing star

Joni Mitchell: Canadian Songbird

Joni Mitchell: Canadian Songbird Roberta Joan Mitchell was born on November 7, 1943, in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, Canada. She studied art briefly in Calgary and moved to Toronto in 1964. The following February she gave birth to her daughter, Kelly Dale Anderson. Reluctantly, she gave the child up for adoption some six months later, a subject memorialized in her 1971 album, “Blue” in the song, “Little Green.” (She would be reunited with her thirty-two years later.) Also in 1964, she married fellow singer, Chuck Mitchell, and they performed for a while in coffee houses and folk clubs. The couple divorced … Continue reading →

Brandy: Superstar Shining Bright

Brandy Rayana Norwood was born on February 11, 1979, in Macomb, Mississippi. Her father, Willie Ray Norwood, was a pastor and choir director, and by the age of two, Brandy was singing in his church. Her mother, Sonja Bates, is a cousin of blues singer, Bo Diddley, and she quit her job at H&R Block to manage her daughter’s career. As a child, Brandy revered Whitney Houston and she told her father at a very age that she wanted to sing like her when she grew up. When, Brandy was nine, her family moved to California where she began singing … Continue reading →

Gloria Estefan: The Queen of Latin Pop

Gloria Maria Millagrosa Fajardo was born on September 1, 1957, in Havana, Cuba. Her family moved to Miami, Florida, when she was sixteen months old following the Cuban Revolution of 1959. During the 1950s, her father, Jose Fajardo, was a bodyguard for the Batista regime, and he was captured in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion that attempted to overthrow the newly supplanted Castro regime. He was part of a prisoner exchange enforced by President John F. Kennedy. Gloria and her younger sister, Becky, were raised primarily in Miami, although during the 1960s they traveled to several military bases where … Continue reading →