Minnie Riperton and other singers who are Zeta Phi Betas

Zeta Phi Beta Inc. is an international and historically black sorority founded by five women at Howard University on January 16, 1920. According to the organization’s website, the founders intended the organization to be “a movement, a belief system, reflecting at its core the desire to perform genuine service, to embrace scholarship, to set a standard for sisterly love, and to define the noble concept of better womanhood.”

The sorority has 850 chapters in the United States, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, and Africa, where it was the first Greek-letter organization on the continent.

Since its founding, Zeta Phi Beta has been dedicated to addressing social issues. To celebrate Founders Day, EBONY.com is highlighting the prominent singers who are members of the esteemed group.

Minnie Riperton

Riperton is best known for her 1975 hit “Lovin’ You,” which she co-wrote with her husband Richard Rudolph. The song was produced by Stevie Wonder and features the singer’s impressive whistle register, the highest register of the human voice, above the modal register and the falsetto register.

Due to her five-octave vocal range, Riperton is considered the “Queen of the Whistle Register.”

The singer-songwriter grew up on Chicago’s South Side, where she studied music, theater and dance at Lincoln Center. As a teenager, she joined local girl group Gem. Riperton later attended Loop College, where she became a member of Zeta Phi Beta before dropping out to pursue a music career.

In the 1960s she worked as a background singer for legendary artists such as Muddy Waters, Etta James and Chuck Berry. From 1967 to 1971, the singer-songwriter was the lead singer of the rock-soul group Rotary Connection.

Three years later she released her first solo album, Perfect Angelwhich was awarded gold.

In January 1976, Riperton was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. She was one of the first celebrities to go public with her diagnosis and became a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society in 1977.

The soprano died on July 12, 1979 at the age of 31 and left behind two children, the music engineer Marc Rudolph and SNL with Maya Rudolph as the star.

Syleena Johnson

Syleena is the daughter of R&B/soul singer Syl Johnson and Brenda Thompson, the first black police commissioner of Harvey, Illinois.

From a young age, Syleena wanted to pursue music, but her father didn’t support her. In 1997, she met someone from Jive Records at a charity basketball game and took her demo tape to a label executive. She was later signed by the company.

From 2001 to 2004 she released two albums: Chapter 1: Love, Pain and Forgiveness And Chapter 2: The Voice. Syleena was featured on fellow Chicagoan Kanye West’s 2004 single “All Falls Down”, which premiered at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards.^th Grammy Awards.

Since then, Syleena has continued to write and record music. The singer-songwriter has appeared in three seasons of TV One’s R&B Divas: Atlanta from 2012 to 2014.

Dionne Warwick

The Grammy winner began her career as a member of the family gospel band, the Drinkard Singers, managed by her mother. She also sang background at recording sessions in New York City, which led to her meeting Burt Bacharach, who hired her to record demos for songs he had written with Hal David.

In 1962, Warwick released her first single, “Don’t Make Me Over.” From then on, she became a superstar with a list of hits including “I Say a Little Prayer” and “Walk On By.”

By 1998, the singer had landed 56 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, making her the second most successful singer of all time.

Traci and Towanda Braxton

Traci and Towanda are two of the five Braxton sisters who contains Trina, Tamar And Toni. They began performing and were signed to Arista Records in the late 80s as a family group, The Braxtons.

Toni later developed a successful solo career in the 1990s with her sisters as backup singers. In 2011, all five sisters began starring in the reality TV series WE. Braxton family values. Four years later they released the album Braxton family Christmas.

In August 2018, Traci released her second album, On earth.

Sarah Vaughan

Vaughn was a jazz singer who was considered one of the greatest singers of the 20th century.^th century, according to NPR.

She began taking piano lessons at the age of seven, and as a teenager she was an organist and choir soloist at Mount Zion Baptist Church in New Jersey.

In 1942, she took part in the Wednesday Night Amateur Contest at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and won first prize at the age of 18. That evening, she met singer Billy Eckstine and joined Earl Hines’ band with jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

Twenty years later, Vaughan won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocalist for her album, GershwinLive!

Mrs. Lillian Evanti

Evanti, born Lillian Evans in Washington, DC in 1891, was one of the first African-American women to become a major international opera singer. She spoke and sang in five languages.

Evanti graduated from Howard University in 1907. The following year, she married her former music professor, Roy W. Tibbs, and combined her maiden and married names to create her stage name.

In 1925, she moved to France to escape the racial discrimination she faced in the United States. The lyric soprano later became the first black woman to sing with a major European opera company and made a name for herself by traveling throughout Europe and Latin America.

She returned to the United States regularly, giving an extraordinary performance for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor in 1934. Almost six years later, Evanti began performing with the National Negro Opera Company, the first black opera company, which she founded with Mary Cardwell.