Gloria Ann Taylor (September 13, 1944 – December 8, 2017), sometimes credited as Gloria Taylor, was an American R&B and soul singer. Her biggest hit was "You Got to Pay the Price" in 1969, and her early 1970s recordings with producer and husband Walter Whisenhunt became sought-after rare grooves before being reissued in the 2010s.She released only a small amount of music during her brief career. She never achieved the commercial success of her contemporaries though she later became a cult sensation. Her genre-bending sound laid the groundwork for disco, R&B, and modern soul music.
She was born in Dehue, West Virginia, and moved to Toledo, Ohio at the age of two with her mother and siblings. As a child, she had rheumatic fever, and was not expected to live to adulthood. She studied at Feilbach School for Crippled Children and Woodward High School. She sang and toured with the Emerald Gospel Singers and the Gospel Chordettes. After her mother died when Gloria was in her teens, she began singing in clubs in Toledo in the early 1960s, to make money to support her own young children. While performing at the Green Light club, she was discovered by Walter Whisenhunt, who had worked as a promoter and production manager with James Brown and been involved in making Doris Troy's hit "Just One Look".
Whisenhunt became her manager and record producer, and the pair soon married. Taylor's brother Leonard was a songwriter and musician who also assisted with the arrangements and production. Her first records (as Gloria Taylor) were issued on the King Soul label in Detroit, before she had her first and biggest chart success with "You Got to Pay the Price", released on Shelby Singleton's Silver Fox label. The record reached No. 9 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 49 on the pop chart in late 1969, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, won that year by Aretha Franklin. The follow-up, "Grounded", reached No. 43 on the R&B chart the following year.
Taylor and Whisenhunt moved to California, and recorded for Columbia Records. Taylor had her third chart hit in 1974 with "Deep Inside You", which reached No. 96 on the R&B chart. However, later in the 1970s Whisenhunt terminated Taylor's links with Columbia on the grounds that they were not releasing enough of her records, a decision that Taylor later regretted, saying "The worst thing he could have done was take me off CBS". She signed for Mercury Records, before Whisenhunt started his own label, Selector Sound, on which Taylor's recordings (on which she was credited as Gloria Ann Taylor) were issued. These included "Love Is A Hurtin' Thing" and a funk version of Dolly Parton's "Jolene".
Taylor's records were later characterized as "a unique musical brew that mixed northern soul with exotic percussion and fuzzy psychedelic guitars in a range of tempos and stylings from ballads to disco." Another critic said that "Whisenhunt challenged Taylor with adventurous song choices. He was a daring innovator, spiking his opulent productions with grimy, psychedelic guitars; meticulously layering harmonies, strings, and vocal harmonies for a singular wall-of-sound approach; leaving in rhythmic clashes and stray tape noise to seemingly heighten drama; and boldly experimenting with vocal effects. "However, the records were not successful at the time, and by 1977 Taylor's career had stalled, and the couple's marriage failed.
Taylor returned to Toledo to raise her children, found other work, and sang only in her church, never recording or performing professionally again. She was a featured soloist at the River of Life Church on Upton Avenue, founded by a nephew, Bishop John Williams.
Over the years some of her recordings became highly sought after by collectors of rare groove soul and funk music and in 2015, after several years of negotiations, Ubiquity Records reissued many of her recordings on CD and vinyl as Love Is A Hurtin' Thing, and Taylor announced her intention to return to performing. It was in 2016, when she returned to the studio for the first time in decades. She recorded a demo of three songs, but tragically passed away at her South Toledo residence on December 8, 2017before any final recordings or production could be completed. She was 73 years old.
(Edited from Wikipedia, Toledo Blade & Bandcamp)