or at our home, I’d be down on the floor singing right along with them, following every part.
I’m told I was three when I sang my first solo in church. One Sunday I was lifted onto the offering table of Mary Evergreen Baptist Church in a little rural town called Frierson in my crisp yellow dress, long skinny legs, white lace socks folded just above the ankles, and shiny patent leather shoes.When I sang “Yes, Jesus Loves Me”—chorus and verse—my father, a strong southern gentleman, broke down in tears.
I remember many Sundays standing buried in the congregation at Mary Evergreen, my head thrown back, singing hymns and “Old One Hundreds,” the call and response songs whose words I didn’t understand. Right beside me stood my beautiful mother, Ola Mae, my sisters, Kathy and Alene, and my brother Junior, in our washed and starched Sunday best. Around us were chocolate, Sunday-hatted women fanning themselves in the Louisiana heat, the sound of the plank floor knocking as a hundred heels tapped them in the rhythm of the songs. All those voices collected in a hollow sacred space became harmony that will always stay— and resonate—with me.
As a small child, I’d sing for anyone. I had never learned to be afraid of performing. Green and Ola Mae taught me that my voice was a gift from God, and even as a rotten-toothed five year old, whenever I was complimented on my voice I would say what I had been told. I believed it with all my heart.
Soon my sisters Kathy and Alene, my cousin Debbie, and I formed our own singing group. We called ourselves—with such originality—The Whitaker Sisters. Whenever Daddy’s group sang, we’d be the bonus treat.
“I got a surprise for y’all,” he’d drawl to the congregation, “My babies gonna sang for ya’!”
We performed in small churches in the Ark-La-Tex (Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas area), at least two Sundays a month. Even at five, I was pushed to the front to do the lead, my sisters and Debbie behind me, for “Do You have an Account in the Bank in the Sky?” an old Clark Sisters song. Alene played piano—often out of tune and sounding like something in a saloon.
At the end of the service, The Spiritual Jubilee would receive a “love offering”: a little bit of what had been given in the basket.
***
At the ripe age of six, I was invited to sing at my favorite cousin Red’s church (his real name was Booker T. Whitaker, but none of us called him that), where he played the organ. Red could make that organ talk, as we like to say in the South. It was a big and beautiful charismatic church, three hours away in Dallas, and I’d never experienced The Holy Spirit take hold like it did that day at Cousin Red’s congregation.
My parents drove Kathy, Debbie, and me to Dallas where the three of us would stay for the week with Cousin Red, his pretty wife, Jewel, and their baby boy, Kenon. Cousin Red and his little family lived in a beautiful stone home in a very nice section of town. It looked like a mansion to me: hardwood floor, paved streets with sidewalks, and three or four bedrooms.
My dad and mom taught me two songs that I would sing for solos. One was “I Trust in God” and the other, “He’ll Understand.”
When Sunday morning came, we piled into Cousin Red’s car and drove to his church. I sat in a middle pew next to my sister and Cousin Debbie and watched the service begin, with the black-robed deacons leading hymns and saying a prayer. I had no idea when I was going to be called up to sing, but Cousin Red had given me a signal: when it was time, he would point at me from the organ. The services continued and no signal came. It felt like an eternity of waiting. Suddenly Cousin Red was pointing to me and mouthing, “You’re gonna be next.” My heart sped up and I took a deep breath. I wanted to sing good for these Dallas people and make my cousin proud.
After the offering Cousin Red stood up at the organ and said, “We have a fine little singer that’s come to us today all the way from Shreveport. She’s my first cousin, and no offense Kathy an’ ya’ll, but she’s my favorite.”
Then I walked up from the congregation to the organ and stood at a microphone that was adjusted for my height. Cousin Red played the introduction, and I began to sing “He’ll Understand.” I was singing real well and was into the second verse: “Misunderstood / The Savior of sinners,” when all of a sudden a lady in a middle pew stood up and shouted, “Glory! Glory!” and began to dance. Soon she was jumping wildly in the aisle, and it looked like people were trying to restrain her. Now, I had seen shouting before because folks in my home church shouted too.
I closed my eyes and tried not to focus on the lady and go on with my song. Then I got to the part that says: “Oh hear Him call / His Father up in Heaven / It’s not my will but let Thine be done” when a man jumped up and started bucking like a horse—like he was having convulsions. All of a sudden he fell like a board, straight back onto the floor.
My six-year-old self was terrified by what was happening to these people, and I could feel tears taking hold. I tried to keep going—that’s what my daddy did when people shouted as he sang—but the tears stopped somewhere in my vocal chords and made the sound come out croaky. I kept on trying, croaking out those words, tears running down my face, until a lady came up and put her arms around me and escorted me to my seat. She gave me a Kleenex, Cousin Debbie patted me on the back, but Cousin Red just kept on playing that organ—playing the notes like he was singing them.
I couldn’t stop crying. I was scared to death and so embarrassed that I hadn’t finished my song. Everybody around me was whipped into a frenzy, and all over the church folks were shouting, “JESUS,” and “Yes, Lord!” The place was on fire! It was something to see, and it didn’t hit me until later, at Cousin Red’s home, that my song had moved these people to dance with the Holy Ghost. Glory! I learned the true power of singing that day.
***
Nineteen years earlier and a thousand miles away in Duluth, Minnesota, in a world before television, a little boy named Donald LeRoi LaFontaine also discovered the power of his voice. At five, Don sang soprano in the choir at a Lutheran church in northwest Duluth. At home, he listened, transfixed, to the old time radio story hours and the great singers of the ’40s. With his perfect pitch and uncanny memory for lyrics he sang right along with his favorites, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and all the crooners of the day.
The boy soprano knew some cold winters and hilly walks to school, but even in kindergarten, Don’s voice was loud enough to be heard over the voices of the other children. His teacher was not amused. “Donald would make all the noise he wants to, if he possibly could, though his ability to sing is unusual and his pitch excellent,” wrote Miss Maxine C. Thoorsell of Lester Park Elementary on Don’s kindergarten report card. She described the five-year-old Don as “a vivid personality, strong willed. He would usurp all the attention and use all the kindergarten material if he could.”
The boy soprano’s larger-than-life personality was quite the challenge for poor Miss Thoorsell, who believed Donald suffered from having been given too much attention. Though she tried using a firm hand, it was no use. Don the entertainer was born. He soon learned to spice up each school day with a little slapstick comedy, endearing himself to his classmates—if not his teachers—throughout elementary school.
When he was ten, Don learned to dance the Lindy Hop. He and his younger sister, Sandra, practiced it in the long hours when their mother, Rubie, was at work. Rubie was a single mother—a rarity in the 1940s—who worked first as a waitress and then later on the assembly line at Western Electric. Her struggle to support her two children instilled a strong work ethic in Don and Sandy. Still, she showered them with as much love and attention as she could. Meanwhile, Don and his sister soon became such a great Lindy team they started entering local dance competitions—and winning.
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