MIKI HOWARD

Born in 1962 in Chicago, Illinois, Alicia Michelle "Miki" Howard was the daughter of two well-known gospel singers. Her father, Clay Graham, sang with the Pilgrim Jubiliees and her mother, Josephine Howard, was a member of the Caravans, a group that would eventually be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During her childhood in Chicago and Detroit, Howard met some of the best singers of the day when they visited her family. "It was nothing for me to see James Cleveland, Billy Preston, and Fats Domino in my house," she said. "I was surrounded by music every day, so I knew I wanted to sing professionally someday." Among Howard's earliest influences were family friends Dinah Washington--to whom she would later be compared--and Aretha Franklin. Howard also counted Nina Simone, Shirley Bassey, Lena Horne, and Judy Garland among her favorite vocalists. When Howard was in her early teens, her mother moved the family to Los Angeles. Already aiming at a career in music, the 15-year-old Howard received her first break when she participated in a teen beauty contest. Augie Johnson, leader of the group Side Effect, happened to be in the audience; impressed with Howard's singing talent, he introduced her to Wayne Henderson, who signed the teenager to a contract with his At Home Productions. Howard also joined the lineup of Side Effect in 1978 when another singer departed. For the next couple of years, Howard continued to sing with the group and performed backup vocals as a studio singer for jazz great Stanley Turrentine, Wayne Henderson, Roy Ayers, Grover Washington, Jr., and Philip Bailey. Howard and Johnson also began a personal relationship that produced two children. Side Effect's last album appeared in 1982. Already in demand as a session vocalist, Howard credited her appearance with Side Effect on comic deejay Rick Dees' singles in the early 1980s as the catalyst for her solo career. "It was my experience with Rick that made me want to go solo," she recounted on the Peak Records website. "We performed at the L.A. Amphitheater and I saw the dressing room marked 'Star' and I was jealous and wanted my own room." Howard signed a contract with Atlantic Records in the mid-1980s and recorded her first solo album, Come Share My Love, in 1986. The title track from the album was its first single, hitting the top ten of the R&B charts and reaching number five in late 1986. A remake of the pop standard "Imagination," which Howard had fought to include on Come Share My Love, was another hit from the album. Howard's second solo album, 1988's Love Confessions, offered another top-five R&B hit with "Baby Be Mine." "That's What Love Is," a duet with Gerald Levert, also hit the R&B charts; the song reflected a real-life romance between the two singers that lasted until 1990. In the meantime, Howard's third solo album, Miki Howard, was released in 1989 and proved her most commercially successful to date. The single "Ain't Nuthin' in the World" became Howard's first number-one hit on the R&B charts and another song, "Love under New Management," followed it to number two. Although it was not her biggest hit, "Love under New Management" became one of Howard's signature tunes. After her relationship with Levert ended, Miki had a brief marriage that lasted about a year and produced another child. Howard continued with a successful solo career after switching to Giant Records in 1991. Her first single under her new contract, "Ain't Nobody like You," became Howard's second number-one R&B hit. The subsequent album, 1992's Femme Fatale, featured Howard's renditions of classic tracks originally performed by Dinah Washington ("This Bitter Earth") and Billie Holiday ("Good Morning Heartache"). After a casting director saw her perform some Billie Holiday tunes at a New York City concert at Radio City Music Hall, Howard was offered the chance to portray Holiday in a nightclub scene in director Spike Lee's 1992 film Malcolm X. The following year, Howard recorded an entire album of Holiday songs, Miki Sings Billie, including her favorite Holiday tune, "Don't Explain." In 1993 Howard made another movie appearance in director John Singleton's Poetic Justice. By that time, the singer had extricated herself from her disastrous marriage, but not before her husband had damaged her career. As she explained to Nathan, "I found out that after he had gone to Giant Records and made a scene, I had become 'blackballed' in the industry because of what he had done.... For instance, I remember I was about to sign with RCA Records and the deal fell through. That was a crushing blow. With all that was going on in my life at the time, I decided to 'retire' for a while to get myself together." Moving to Atlanta with her three children in the aftermath of her divorce, Howard was comforted by friends Chaka Khan, Cherelle, and Patti LaBelle. She released Live Plus in 1996 and a comeback album of original material, Can't Count Me Out, in 1997. Howard also toured in the road company of the Broadway musical Dreamgirls in the role of lead Dream, Deena. By 1999, Howard was ready to revive her recording career in earnest. As she related to Nathan, she simply contacted her managers and said, "I need to make a record." "One of my co-managers at the time had started Peak Records so it was uncanny," Howard continued. "I got a deal pretty quickly with the label! Lots of my friends started coming out of the woodwork to give me songs and before we knew it, we had ten ready to go." Howard's first album of original material in four years, Three Wishes, was released in 2001 to excellent reviews. The album earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Traditional R&B Recording; although she lost out to Gladys Knight in that category, the nomination itself represented an artistic comeback for Howard. After 25 years in the music business, the singer was comfortable with her place in the industry and resigned to the compromises it demanded. In 2001 The Very Best of Miki Howard, including her top R&B hits from the late 1980s and early 1990s, was released on Rhino Records. An album on the Shanachie label, Pillow Talk: Miki Sings the Classics was released in 2006. Miki's latest album released in 2008, Private Collection on Branicka Records was already causing a positive buzz, even before it's release. "Private Collection is the kind of record that you "live" to." says Miki. "You play it in the car, play it while you clean your house, play it at cocktail parties, that's the kind of record this is. The five standards that I did on this CD are five of my favorites. That's why i called this work Private Collection." I'm sure that it will not diappoint Miki's fans, old and new and will continue to build on the unbelievably solid legacy that is Miki Howard.