Albertina Walker born August 29, 1929

Albertina Walker (August 29, 1929 – October 8, 2010) was an American gospel singer, songwriter and humanitarian.

The Caravans 1957

Walker was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Ruben and Camilla Coleman Walker. Her mother was born in Houston County, Georgia, and her father in Bibb County, Georgia. They moved to Chicago between 1917 and 1920 where they lived out their lives. Albertina had four siblings born in Bibb County and four born in Chicago. Albertina began singing in the youth choir at the West Point Baptist Church at an early age, and joined several Gospel groups thereafter, including the Pete Williams Singers, the Willie Webb Singers, and the Robert Anderson Singers.

The Caravans 1960

Albertina was greatly influenced by Mahalia Jackson, her friend and confidante, whom Jackson took on the road when Albertina was just a teenager. "Mahalia used to kid me. She'd say, 'Girl, you need to go sing by yourself'", recalled Walker in a 2010 Washington Post interview. Walker did just that. In the early 1950s, Walker founded her own Gospel music group The Caravans, enlisting fellow singers from The Robert Anderson Singers (Ora Lee Hopkins, Elyse Yancey and Nellie Grace Daniels). The Caravans' membership included: James Cleveland, Bessie Griffin, Shirley Caesar, Dorothy Norwood, Inez Andrews, Loleatta Holloway, Cassietta George, and Delores Washington. 

The Caravans 1965

Her discovery of these artists resulted in the nickname "Star Maker". The Caravans signed in 1957 with Savoy Records, which also acquired rights to their earlier sides for States. All of their recordings for Savoy were issued on Gospel, a subsidiary of the Newark, New Jersey–based parent label. The Caravans moved to Chicago’s Vee-Jay Records in 1962 but briefly returned to Savoy’s Gospel label four years later.

The Caravans’ star began to dim following Shirley Caesar’s 1966 departure. The group laboured on for several more years, recording for the Gospel, Hob and Jewel labels before Walker threw in the towel in the early ’70s. Members of later editions of the group included future disco star Loleatta Holloway and singing pianist Willie James McPhatter.

                                   

She was popularly referred to as the "Queen of Gospel Music", initially by such notables as the late Reverend James Cleveland and Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr, for her outstanding achievements within the genre after the death of Mahalia Jackson in 1972. The second act in Walker’s career began in 1975 when she emerged as a solo artist with an album for Polydor Records. It generated little attention. In 1978, however, she re-signed with Savoy, which partnered her with Cleveland for a strong-selling album titled Reunion. The next release with her lifelong friend, 1979’s Please Be Patient with Me, did even better and remains a classic of her extensive discography. In addition to the two discs with Cleveland, Walker made six more albums for Savoy between 1981 and ’88 on which she was backed by various choirs. Later recordings appeared on the Benson, Word, Rejoice, A&M, and Verity labels through 1997.

To date, she has recorded over 60 albums, including gold selling hits "Please Be Patient With Me", "I Can Go to God in Prayer", "The Best Is Yet to Come", "Impossible Dream", and "Joy Will Come". Walker sang for United States presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and South Africa's president, Nelson Mandela. Walker is featured in Who's Who in Black America as well as other volumes related to the Golden Age of Gospel Music. She received several keys to various cities and was honoured at the Chicago Gospel Festival where a bench bearing her name was placed in downtown Chicago's Grant Park. The City of Chicago paid tribute to Albertina by renaming 35th and Cottage Grove "Albertina Walker and The Caravans Drive".

She was also conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters Degree by the Chicago Theological Seminary, an institution of the University of Chicago. Walker co-founded the Gospel Music Workshop of America along with James Cleveland. She lent her support to many other groups. In 1988, she founded The Albertina Walker Scholarship Foundation for the Creative and Performing Arts, which offers financial assistance to college students in the form of scholarships to further their education in the field of music.

In 1995, Walker joined Thelma Houston, CeCe Peniston, Phoebe Snow and Lois Walden to record a gospel album in common, Good News in Hard Times, as the quintet called The Sisters of Glory. Walker recorded a reunion album with her group The Caravans entitled Paved the Way, which was released by Malaco Records on September 5, 2006. Performers included Walker, Dorothy Norwood, Inez Andrews and Delores Washington. The album was dubbed by Billboard magazine as one of the most memorable releases of 2006 and entered the Billboard charts in the top ten and remained in the top forty for sixteen weeks. Paved the Way was nominated for a Grammy, Dove, Soul Train Music Award and two Stellar Awards.

Albertina in 2003

Walker earned many awards and honours over her six decades of music ministry. Among them, 5 Gold Records; several Gospel Music Workshop of America Excellence Awards; an induction into the 2001 Gospel Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee. She is also a recipient of a 2005 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honour in the folk and traditional arts.

2010

A smoker of cigarettes for many years, the lifelong Chicagoan suffered from emphysema. On her 81st birthday, Walker was admitted to a local Chicago hospital and placed on a ventilator. At the time, she was in ICU dealing with respiratory problems–a condition she battled for years, and kept her on oxygen. On Tuesday, September 7, Walker had a tracheostomy which doctors deemed a success, and she checked out of a Chicago hospital in late September and was admitted to RML specialty hospital for follow up care. She died on October 8, 2010.

(Edited from Wikipedia & Malaco.com)