Singer Gwen McCrae has died at age 81. McCrae came to be known to the public in the ’70s when her single “Rockin’ Chair’ topped the soul charts. She started her career as a teenager singing in clubs around her native Pensacola, Florida. The singing partnership she formed with her husband George led to local hits, “Like Yesterday Our Love Is Gone” and “No One Left To Come Home,” written by Clarence Reid, who later became Blowfly, and Willie Clarke. McCrae recorded a cover of Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Lead Me On,” which was picked up by Columbia and became a Top 40 hit. The success of the Bland cover is when her husband retired from singing to become her manager. Reid and Clarke wrote “Rockin’ Chair,” which McCrae had recorded for the TK Records subsidiary, Cat. Betty Wright, another Florida R&B legend, had introduced The McCraes to the owner of the record label and helped them get a deal with the company. McCrae had one more national hit with the label, “Damn Right Its Good,” before her marriage ended as well as her contract with the label. Her relocation to New Jersey included a new record deal with Atlantic. This second phase of her solo career is when she released the dance music classics “Funky Sensation,” “Poyson,” “All This Love That I’m Giving,” and “Keep The Fire Burning.” McCrae injected funk into soulful arrangements meant for dancing. In the 70s, she was the first person to release “You Were Always On My Mind” as a country ballad, but by the ’80s, she had become a dance music legend. New fans were born in places like the dancefloor of the Paradise Garage in New York City. Her brand of funk was less polished than the typical disco sound, so some called it post-disco, but it was just another soulful strain of dance music. Decades later, “Funky Sensation” would be sampled by British dance group Disclosure as well as singers Leela James and Rahsaan Patterson.
In the 2000s, McCrae released a gospel album and joined the Soulpower organization that launched comebacks for James Brown associates Bobby Byrd, Marva Whitney, Lyn Collins, and Martha High. She released her last single, Now I Found Love,” in 2010.
