She showers us with her passion, her voice surging into our veins and it really does feel like we’re all getting somewhere together. With her the ideals of clubland such as sex, community and passionate abandon are taken by the horns, amplified and belted back as she sings to each and every dancer and the venue space as a whole. Holloway’s is a collective experience, a mutual understanding and shared joy. The key to her appeal is she doesn’t push herself too far to the front. Personally I have to agree with BBC Radio 1 DJ Gilles Peterson who claims the slower ‘Hit And Run’ as his favourite, saying: “That really takes the soul, the emotion, the disco – everything about Loleatta Holloway is in that one song.” Many people name ‘Runaway’ as their most loved Holloway track. Delivered in an orgasmic yell, she sings: “You get down, you get down to the reeeeeal nitty gritty”! Holloway verges on the brink of insanity, wielding her war cry for love’s primal scream. Listening to ‘Love Sensation’ today, the level of emotion is still breathtaking. For her 2009 global hit, ‘Million Dollar Bill’, superstar Whitney Houston sampled Loleatta’s 1976 song, ‘We’re Getting Stronger’.
In 2009 Loleatta Holloway performed with Take That on their reworking of the Dan Hartman song ‘Relight My Fire’. Billed as Cevin Fisher featuring Loleatta Holloway, the track reached #14 in the UK chart and was reissued in 2008 with minimal Prok & Fitch remixes. Cevin Fisher took further samples from Love Sensation to make up the vocal for ‘(You Got Me) Burning Up’.
In 1992, Italian dance outfit Cappella sampled Loleatta again, on their single ‘Take Me Away’ (UK #25). Holloway performed with the band to promote the single, receiving credits and royalties. Holloway’s fortunes improved dramatically in 1991, when she had her first US #1 with Mark Wahlberg aka Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch who featured her ‘Love Sensation’ vocals in the chart-topping ‘Good Vibrations’. Holloway, however, was not credited and successfully sued for an undisclosed settlement.
The track became the best selling UK single of 1989 and launched a new genre called ‘Sample House’. In the late 1980s, Italian trio Black Box used her vocals from ‘Love Sensation’ in their UK #1 hit, ‘Ride on Time’, fronted and lip-synced by model Catherine Quinol. This was the track that for many became her signature tune. In 1980 Hartman wrote and produced the title track of her album, ‘Love Sensation’. It was perhaps when Loleatta provided vocals to ‘Re-Light My Fire’ for Dan Hartman, that her golden years began. The first release was another successful R&B ballad, ‘Worn-Out Broken Heart’, but the B-side, ‘Dreaming’, climbed the Pop chart and launched her as a major disco act. In 1976 top Philadelphia producer Norman Harris spotted the rising star and signed Holloway to his Gold Mind, a subsidiary of New York’s legendary Salsoul Records. The ballad ‘Cry to Me’ was her first single and rose to #10 on the Billboard R&B chart and #68 on the Hot 100. Holloway then signed with soul label Aware and recorded two albums: Loleatta (1973) and Cry to Me (1975), both produced by Smith. In 1971, Loleatta met her future husband, Floyd Smith, and together recorded Rainbow ‘71 and For Sentimental Reasons. Loleatta’s roots were set by singing gospel with her mother and the Holloway Community Singers, recording withAlbertina Walker in the Caravans and singing with her own Loleatta Holloway and Her Revue in the Sixties. She had an elegant, serene royalty about her, but was totally down to earth and even offered me her phone number.
In contrast to the image of the strong, assertive woman she projected, she was the gentlest, most warm-hearted, almost shy person you could imagine. In 1994 when I was in New York for the Gay Games I stayed with her hairdresser and met her back stage after her show at the Roxy. The sheer explosive power her lungs expelled turned singing into an emotional tornado, raising the roof and blowing the house down every time.
However loud the pounding pianos and orchestral backing may have been, Loleatta’s irreplaceable voice, full of strident indignation and an almost volcanic sexuality, was always the dominant force, but never overbearing, in the songs she sang. With her musical legacy, Loleatta Holloway was possibly THE finest Diva in dance music history. She was 64 years old and is survived by four children. Soul singer Loleatta Holloway died March 21st 2011 from heart failure at her home in Chicago.