Wanda Dee

Wanda Dee is a singer songwriter whose career has spanned many years. Her face and vocals are well known to international audiences through her involvement as lead singer on a number of international hits such as 3 a.m. Eternal and Last Train to Trancentral, and "Dee was featured on six Top Ten singles, including "Last Train to Transcentral" and "Justified and Ancient","[1], with the KLF. Describing her contribution during the 1990s, Word magazine listed her as amongst "the most outstanding female artists of the decade"[2]

Contents

Early Years

She started as one of the first Hip Hop female DJ, and was "forever historialized in HARRY BELAFONTE's film "BEAT STREET" (where she blazed the wheels of steal barely in her teens), to being the first (solo) female rap artist to score two consecutive platinum singles; "THE GODDESS" b/w "TO THE BONE" (Tuff City Records) while still in her early teens (1989), to her present day status as The Empress Of Techno Music"[3]

Unauthorised use of vocals by the KLF

British group the KLF, which stands for Kopyright Liberation Front used an unauthorized sample from one of her previous records, and this led to her being involved in the band the KLF.

As Dinnen (1993) describes in an article for Beat magazine, quoting her manager: ""I'd never heard of these people and they'd never asked Wanda's permission to use her voice. They'd taken off her biggest selling rap single 'To The Bone' - the record opens up with Wanda saying 'I wanna see you sweat' - and sampled it right off the record and put it on What Time is Love?. It wasn't until I went to sue Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty that I discovered they had also taken from the same record the line 'come on boy do you wanna ride?' and slapped that on Last Train to Trancentral." [4] "The KLF stands for Kopyright Liberation Federation - that's what they told us. They spell Kopyright with a K because they think it's OK to steal other people's material, by-passing other people's publishing companies and copyright, putting it into their own records, using their own studio wizardry, in releasing it to the masses. But they'd just gone too far this time." [5] "So their settlement with us was to invite Wanda to participate in the rest of the LP, to star in the Stadium House Trilogy and video and do a track of hers called 'Do as I Damn Well Please' for her upcoming solo album, to receive a shit-load of money as a cash settlement, to fly us over to do the videos and also to give her co-publishing credits on the songs which she co-wrote with Bill - which they did because all the records say co-written by L. McFarland, which stands for Wanda's real name L'wanda McFarland. And also you'll see on the bottom of the album it says WandDee music, which is Wanda Dee's co-publishing company.""[6]

Success with the KLF

KLF songs on which Dee was featured include: "3AM ETERNAL" "CONTROVERSY" "LA VIE EN ROSE" "LOVE LIKE MINE" "CHURCH OF THE KLF" "WHAT TIME IS LOVE?" "JUSTIFIED & ANCIENT" "ALL BOUND FOR MU MU LAND" "LAST TRAIN TO TRANCENTRAL" [7] This led to massive international success, with the KLF being the best selling British group in the world in 1990.[8].

Indeed, it wasn't until the involvement of Wanda Dee and other vocalists that the KLF managed to have this massive success. One reporter noted that "BILL DRUMMOND & JIM CAUTY of The KLF had been around for many years with only moderate underground success, however, their fortunes turned upward when they decided to collaborate with several vocalists (P.P. Arnold, Maxine Harvey, Samantha Brown, etc.), rappers & Wanda as a lead singer, lyricist & sensuous centrepiece of their acclaimed songs & video presentations, throughout the 90's"[9]

Breakup of the KLF

The original producers and songwriters for the KLF Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty decided to disband the group in 1992.[1] Wanda Dee, as lead vocalist for the KLF subsequently decided to mount a live performance without them as the KLF experience. This led to cease and desist notices by Drummond and Cauty [10] despite the fact that there was massive public popularity for her work [11]

Recent work

Dee has also worked with Blue Man Group[12]

References

  1. ^ The KLF

See also