Carleen Anderson biography
Carleen Anderson (born 10 May 1957) is an American soul singer, who has had success in the United Kingdom. She is the daughter of the singer Vicki Anderson and stepdaughter of Bobby Byrd, and is most well known as the lead singer in the Young Disciples as well as for her own solo career.
Early career
Anderson was raised by her paternal grandparents, David Sr. and Alberta Anderson, in Houston, Texas, during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Pastor Anderson's Pentecostal church was located in the Fifth Ward political district of North Houston, populated by working class African-Americans, many of whom were migrant sharecroppers, and their descendants, from Louisiana. By the time Anderson was 3 years old, she was singing solos in front of the congregation. By the age of 7, Anderson was playing piano by ear, directing the church choir and writing church songs every week for the choir to sing before her grandfather would deliver his Sunday sermons. The gospel music atmosphere was enhanced by Anderson having the benefit of her Aunt Betty Faye Anderson, soprano soloist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her Uncle, David Anderson Jr., and his daughters, Pamela and Jhelisa, along with their mother, Yvonne, had a very successful family gospel singing group that travelled the southern US states. Anderson's birth father, Dr. Reuben Anderson Sr., is pastor of the Tower of Faith Evangelistic Church of God in Christ, in Compton California. Her mother is soul singer, Vicki Anderson who featured with James Brown during the 1960s and 1970s. Vicki Anderson (birth name, Myra Barnes) married Bobby Byrd (soul singer and childhood friend of James Brown) who formed a group with James Brown in the late 1950s called The Flames, which was later named, James Brown & The Famous Flames. After a brief marriage, Anderson gave birth to a son, Bobby Anderson, in 1979. After the divorce, Anderson lived as a single mother in Los Angeles where she received several scholarships to study classical and jazz music performance, as well as music education, at Los Angeles City College (LACC) and the University of Southern California (USC). Anderson also studied Creative Literature at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). During her studies, Anderson worked as a student tutor for extra income to support herself and her child. Anderson's goal at the time was to become a music school teacher, but her plans were thwarted when President Ronald Reagan took music out of the curriculum in the government-sponsored schools. With only one semester left before completing her music degree, circumstances caused Anderson to take office-clerk jobs to make ends meet. In a 2005 Echoes magazine interview, Anderson says that a career in music performance was not at all on her agenda at that time.
The following summer, after her Godfather, James Brown, was incarcerated in 1988, several artists from the James Brown Show toured worldwide as "˜Bobby Byrd and the JB All Stars'. It was the summer of 1989, and Anderson was asked to join the tour as the opening act. She saw this as an opportunity to have a "˜working' holiday in Europe with her son. With her brothers Bartlett Anderson on keyboards and Tony Byrd on drums, they continued touring with the collective until 1990. Whilst on the road, Anderson was the understudy for Vicki Anderson, Marva Whitney, Lyn Collins and Martha High, with additional tutelage by Maceo Parker, Pee Wee Ellis and Fred Wesley.
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