Brenda holloway - every little bit hurts
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Brenda Holloway
California native Brenda Holloway has always had a passion for music. From singing in her church’s choir to studying the violin, music has always been the center of her life. When Brenda Holloway began her professional career, she joined California-based label Donna (a sister label to Del-Fi) and released a slew of singles, including her first major hit “Every Little Bit Hurts” (which was later re-released). Through her producer Hal Davis, she met Berry Gordy and secured an audition at Motown Records. Taken by her voice and her style, he offered her a recording contract, on the condition that she graduate from high school first. She graduated a year later and signed to Motown in 1964 when she was 17. Quickly, Motown released her first album Every Little Bit Hurts in 1964, with the titular song being her first big hit reaching #23 on the US pop charts and #3 on US R&B. Her career went into overdrive—everyone wanted Brenda Holloway.
A year later, she was invited by Dick Clark to be on his “Caravan of Stars” tour; then, she became the first Motown artist t
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The Brenda Holloway Biography -
Every Little Bit Shines
All that glittered was not gold, nor platinum, at Motown. Yet as this Brenda Holloway biography shows, the soul singer dazzled anyway, and early on.
If word hadn't already spread about her before she joined the future Whispers, it had by the time she sang backup with lead Patrice on a local recording--Brenda's first at age 14. Los Angeles at large also let the girls liven up various sessions with their valuable vocals.
1964 was the year Brenda broke out of the crowd. After catching wind of a DJ convention in the city, she morphed from kitchen-mopper to event-crasher. With her mother, a friend, and a taut gold pantsuit, her audacity and sparkle screamed "star!" One DJ was so convinced that he summoned her onstage.
She sang ("My Guy"), Be
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Holloway, Brenda
Singer
Sixties R&B diva Brenda Holloway is "the most beautiful woman ever signed to Motown," according to author George Nelson, who wrote Holloway's biography on the Fantasy Jazz website. Signed in 1964, during the label's heyday, Holloway recorded such Motown hits as "Every Little Bit Hurts," "I'll Always Love You," "When I'm Gone," "Operator," and "Just Look What You've Done." This was all before 1968, when she quit show business for the next 20 years to raise her family.
Born in Atascadero, California, in 1946 and raised in Los Angeles, Holloway had musical talent even as a child. She played violin and sang in the church choir in her Watts neighborhood. "We were very, very poor, but my mother always had a home," Holloway remembered in her Fantasy Jazz biography. She even sang for a while during junior high school with a vocal group that later became the Whispers. Her first recorded performance was at age 14, when she sang backup for her younger sister, Patrice, then 12, who cut a single called "Do the Del Viking" for a local independent record la
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