VIOLA WILLSViola Wills, who died on 6 May, 2009, aged 69, was an American singer and songwriter who had a string of disco hits in the late 1970s and ’80s.
She was best remembered for her version of Gonna Get Along Without You Now which reached number 8 in the UK charts in 1979.
This breakthrough led to several self-penned hits in the UK and Europe.
She enjoyed new interest in her music during the recent ’80s revival and her records were also popular on the gay scene.
She continued to make new music, creating a blend of jazz and gospel which she called ‘Jazzspel’.
Viola Mae Wilkerson was born in LA on 30 December, 1939, and had six children before being discovered by soul legend Barry White who signed her to Bronco Records.
She worked as a session singer with the likes of White, Joe Cocker and Smokey Robinson. With access to studio space and Cocker’s backing band in London she recorded a debut album in the early ’70s.
However, it was Gonna Get Along Without You Now, a disco reworking of a song originally recorded by Teresa Brewer in 1952, that broke her into the mainstream. She followed it up in the following years with original song Dare To Dream (1985), and covers of If You Could Read My Mind (1980), Stormy Weather (1982) and Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now (1986).
In 1982 she returned to America to study music therapy and also staged a one-woman show called Willspower. The following year she and her second husband, Robert Ashmun, founded a record company and she frequently visited Europe to perform.
Continuing to make music late in life, she released her single Enjoy Yourself in 2007.
She died of cancer and was survived by her six children – Vincent, Christopher, Regina, La Donna, David and Rejal – 21 grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.
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