Martha Wash
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Martha Wash (born 28 December 1953, in San Francisco, California) is an R&B/Soul music, House music and dance music singer/songwriter.
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[edit] Early Career
Wash began her music career as a backing singer for Sylvester. With fellow backing singer Izora Rhodes she was half of Two Tons O' Fun, who would later be renamed The Weather Girls. As such, they were responsible for providing much of the fire-power behind several of the late singer's earliest releases - often their voices were mixed where Sylvester was actually the background singer and Wash and Rhodes voices were upfront. When the two plus-sized singers left to pursue a career on their own, they struck pay dirt with a handful of successful disco-oriented tracks -- reaching their commercial zenith with the release of "It's Raining Men," one of the classic songs of the late-disco and Hi-NRG era. They scored another moderate hits with "Dear Santa (Bring Me a Man for Christmas)" and "No One Can Love You Mor Than Me" in 1985.
[edit] Solo Career
Later, when the Weather Girls disbanded, Wash continued to lend her vocals to various dance and House music tracks. Several of them became massive pop, R&B and dance hits: Black Box's "Everybody Everybody," "I Don't Know Anybody Else" and "Strike It Up", as well as lesser-knowns such as "Fantasy", "Open Your Eyes" and "Hold On" and Seduction's "You're My One and Only (True Love)". C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)," hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1991.
Wash's powerful vocals were lip synced in the videos to the above songs by C+C's Zelma Davis and Black Box's Katrin Quinol. With the Milli Vanilli scandal still fresh in everyone's minds, Wash, also perturbed by the fact that her image had been labeled "unmarketable" because of her physical size, successfully sued to receive proper credit (and royalties) as the vocalist on all of the music. Wash's courtroom efforts spurred legislation making vocal credits mandatory on CDs and music videos, and also awarded her a recording contract with RCA which led to her debut, self-titled solo album in 1993. The album scored three major top ten dance hits including "Carry On", "Give It To You" and "Runaround." The first two hit number one.
Here is a list of the artist's Number One singles (group, solo, credited and uncredited) as determined by Billboard magazine as well as significant entries. Peak chart position for non-number ones shown in (parentheses):
- 1978 "Dance (Disco Heat)
- 1980 "Just Us" (#2)
- 1980 "I Got The Feeling" (#2)
- 1982 "It's Raining Men"
- 1989 "You're My One And Only (True Love)" (#3)
- 1990 "Everybody, Everybody"
- 1990 "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)"
- 1990 "I Don't Know Anybody Else"
- 1991 "Strike It Up"
- 1992 "Carry On"
- 1993 "Give It To You"
- 1993 "Runaround" (#10)
- 1994 "Leave A Light On"
- 1996 "Keep On Jumpin'" (duet with Jocelyn Brown)
- 1997 "Somethin' Goin' On" (duet with Jocelyn Brown)
- 1998 "Catch the Light"
- 1998 "Come" (#4)
- 2000 "Listen To The People" (#14)
- 2004 "You Lift Me Up" (#4)
[edit] 2005 to Present
Wash, a notable star within the gay community, continues to record new music into the 21st century such as her first new single in over 5 years, "You Lift Me Up" - a fusion of Gospel and House which is the first song produced on her own label, Purple Rose Records - 2005. Martha Wash performed in the opening ceremony of the World's first OutGames in Montreal in July 2006. She has also performed at numerous Human Rights Campaign events in the U.S.
Wash is scheduled to appear on Broadway (along with Sarah Dash of Labelle in "Gals Too Big for Broadway." The show was supposed to run in late 2006, but has been temporarily postponed.
