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Kalamu ya Salaam's information blog

Once you hear her sing, it is impossible to forget her voice, especially the high notes she seemed to so effortlessly hit.

 

Plus, she could be funky as all get out.

 

She was a favorite of Stevie Wonder, who also added production expertise to her 1974 second album under the El Toro Negro pseudonym that produced “Perfect Angel”.  

 

Riperton also made  a cover hit in duet with Jose Feliciano’s version of “Light My Fire.”

 

Minnie Riperton (November 8, 1947 – July 12, 1979) performs on stage, New York, 1977. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)

She was so popular and her music so powerful it is easy to forget that there was controversy surrounding some of her songs, especially “Inside My Love”, that some radio stations refused to play because they said it was too graphic, too erotic, too. . . too “ohhhh”.

 

But that was simultaneously not only the beauty of Minnie but also the forward thinking that was at the core of her being. She challenged many of the gender, racial and political standards of her era. 

 

 

Minnie’s song “Memory Lane”, rather than being backward looking as the title implies, is actually a song memorializing the beauty moments in our lives that may be behind us in time but are still very much an emotional aspect of our present, and probably will remain so in all of our future.

 

Here is a Japanese documentary that presents her story. Enjoy.