Shirley Johnson

Like so many African-American vocalists, Shirley Johnson started out singing in church and went on to embrace secular music. The Chicago resident, whose influences range from Mahalia Jackson to Koko Taylor, Etta James, and Ruth Brown, is a gritty, big-voiced blues singer who can also handle soul and gospel. Although Johnson has spent much of her adult life in Chicago, the Windy City is not her hometown; she was born in Franklin, Virginia on June 7, 1949, and raised in Norfolk. Johnson came from a very religious family and she was only six when she started singing gospel in a c...