Inez Andrews, whose soaring, wide-ranging voice — from contralto croon to soul-wrenching wail — made her a pillar of gospel music, died on Wednesday at her home in Chicago. She was 83.The cause was cancer, said her son Richard Gibbs.“She was the last great female vocalist of gospel’s golden age,” said Anthony Heilbut, author of “The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times” (1971), a history of that era, from the mid-1940s to the early ’60s. Andrews was known as the “High Priestess,” Mr.
Albertina Walker Funeral Program In Florida
Heilbut said, ranking among the likes of Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Clara Ward.Ms. Andrews came to national attention in 1958 with the Caravans, the Chicago gospel group led by that also nurtured such stars as Shirley Caesar, the. That year she was the lead singer for what became two of the Caravans’ biggest hits.One was “I’m Not Tired Yet,” an up-tempo shout song in which she belted out, “I’ve been running for Jesus a long time/No, I’m not tired yet.”.
“Nothing ever worked for the Caravans until Inez started whistling” — hitting the high notes — Ms. Walker often said.In 1972 Aretha Franklin recorded what became the biggest-selling gospel album of her career, “Amazing Grace.” Its biggest hit was a reprise of Ms. Andrew’s version of “Mary Don’t You Weep.”Ms. Andrews began her career with two groups in Birmingham, Ala., her hometown: Carter’s Choral Ensemble and the Original Gospel Harmonettes. By the mid-1950s, the Harmonettes were one of the nation’s top gospel groups, with Ms. Andrews the understudy for the group’s lead singer, Dorothy Love Coates. Coates who recommended Ms.
Andrews to the Caravans. The Caravans: from left, Inez Andrews, Albertina Walker, an unidentified singer, Johneron Davis and Dorothy Norwood. CreditMichael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesIn 1962 Ms. Andrews left the Caravans to start her own group, Inez Andrews and the Andrewettes. They toured the country performing songs like “It’s in My Heart” and her composition “(Lord I Wonder) What Will Tomorrow Bring?” But by 1967 she was touring as a soloist, and in 1973 she recorded her biggest hit, “Lord Don’t Move the Mountain.”“Lord don’t move the mountain/Give me the strength to climb,” she sang.During her long career Ms.
Andrews recorded for many labels, among them Savoy, Jewel and Spirit Feel, and often performed at reunion concerts with the Caravans. In 2002 she was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. From a seductive, bluesy sound — often singing behind the beat — Ms. Andrews could burst into an impassioned, raspy cry.“Even in songs of rejoicing, her voice has a somber undertone,” Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times in 1990, “and when she takes on supplicating songs like the midtempo ‘Lord I’ve Tried’ or the glacial minor-key blues of ‘Stand by Me’ — both of which rise, verse by verse, to a near-scream — Ms.
Andrews can sound desperate, on the verge of hysteria. Hers is a gospel of terror, and of the relief faith provides.”Faith came out of hardship for Inez McConico, who was born in Birmingham on April 14, 1929, to Theodore and Pauline McConico. Her mother died when she was 2.
Her father, a coal miner, was often out of work during the Depression. AdvertisementInez was a teenager when she married Robert Andrews. By the time they divorced, when she was 18, she was the mother of two daughters. Working at menial jobs, including cleaning the steps of the Birmingham courthouse, she earned $18 a week.
Still, she sang at church and came to the attention of the Harmonettes.Ms. Andrews’s second husband, Richard Gibbs Sr., died in 1964; her third husband, Wendell Edingburg, died in 2006.Besides her son Richard, who is now Ms. Franklin’s pianist, she is survived by three other sons, Casey, Mark and Wendell Edingburg Jr.; three daughters, Legretta Moultry, Gail Perkins and Suzanne Edingburg; 17 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren.“For Ms. Andrews, the message had to be about God,” The Chicago Tribune said in 1994.In one her best-known solos, “Just for Me,” which she wrote and recorded in 1983, she sang, “Just for me, just for me/When you start out blessing, Lord, have one just for me.”. Correction: December 25, 2012A picture caption on Saturday with an obituary about the gospel singer Inez Andrews, using information from Getty Images, misidentified the members of the gospel group the Caravans, with which she sang. They are, from left, Ms. Andrews; Albertina Walker; an unidentified singer; Johneron Davis, and Dorothy Norwood — not, from left, Ms.
Davis, Sarah McKissick, Ms. Walker and Ms. The obituary also misspelled the surname of her third husband and that of several of her children. He was Wendell Edingburg, not Edinburg. The children — Casey, Mark, Wendell Jr. And Suzanne — are also named Edingburg.