Sista Monica Parker

Like E.C. Scott, Bettye LaVette, Denise LaSalle, and many other powerful contemporary blues women, Sista Monica Parker got her start singing in church. She began singing at age seven and was touring with the choir as a 12-year-old. Parker sang with her local church choir in places like Chicago and Detroit, which got her exposure to show business -- albeit in the church -- early. Parker cited Al Green, Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers, Jackie Wilson, and Sam Cooke as early influences. After some time in college, she joined the U.S. Marine Corps, attaining the rank of sergeant after three years. Upon discharge, she began her own staffing firm for engineering professions. After several years in the Chicago area, she relocated her business to Silicon Valley in Northern California. Her blue-chip clients included Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo!, and Sun Microsystems. Then, inspired by her neighbor MC Hammer, Parker decided to turn her longtime love of singing into more than just an avocation. She began sharing stages in Northern California clubs and festivals with Gladys Knight, Mavis Staples, Taj Mahal, Luther Allison, Etta James, and other blues and classic R&B legends. By 1995, she had recorded and released her debut, Get Out of My Way. Radio programmers latched on to the tune "Windy City Burner," and she and her band were able to tour the U.S., Europe, and Canada in support of it. She recorded a second album, the self-titled Sista Monica, in 1997. In 1998, she received a W.C. Handy Award nomination under the Best Contemporary Blues Female category and won a California Music Award the same year for Most Outstanding Blues Artist. In 2000, Parker released her third album, People Love the Blues, which showcases the talents of Jimmy Thackery, Larry McCray, and Dan Caron from the Charles Brown Band. In 2001, she released her first gospel album, Gimme That Old Time Religion, an artistic full-circle for her, as she returned to the gospel roots of her youth. That same year, she released Live in Europe, which captures the spirit and energy of her live performances with her touring band. It was on tour in Europe in the late '90s that she first earned the moniker "the Blues Lioness." In 2002, she was presented with the Blues Artist of the Year award at the 17th annual Monterey Bay Blues Festival. After completing a 17-concert tour of the Netherlands in late 2002, she discovered a lump under her right arm and later found out it was a rare and severe form of cancer, synovial sarcoma. Parker underwent more than a year of chemotherapy, radiation treatments, and physical therapy, always affirming herself and holding onto her faith in God and her will to live. In 2004, she re-emerged and recorded an album of soul and jazz standards popularized by Ray Charles and Dinah Washington, Love, Soul & Spirit, Vol. 1. Her subsequent release, Can't Keep a Good Woman Down!, showcased her abilities as a blues and classic R&B vocalist, but also included some well-chosen covers, including Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away" and Sam Cooke's "A Change Gonna Come." It confirmed Parker as one of the most powerful singers of blues, gospel, classic R&B, and soul in the late 2000s, a fact she proved with continual touring of the U.S. and parts of Europe. Sweet Inspirations, released in 2008, included covers of Mississippi Fred McDowell, the Beatles, and Rodgers & Hammerstein. Singin' in the Spirit followed in 2010, and 2011's Living in the Danger Zone featured a raft of Parker originals. She released one more album, 2012's Soul Blues & Ballads, before slowing down in the mid-2010s. Parker died in late 2014, but was honored posthumously by the Blues Music Awards with the honor of Soul Blues Female Artist of the Year.
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