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 About a year or so before she abandoned her classical training, young Minnie was discovered in the Hyde Park High School A Cappella Choir by Raynard Miner and Rose Miller. They brought her to Chess Records in late 1963 and teamed her up with the Gems (Jessica Collins, Theresa Washum, Bertha Watts and Dorothy Hucklebee), a group out of Marshall High on the West Side. Miner was a member as a pianist and composer, and Miller was the group's manager. Minnie replaced a girl who was leaving, Vandine Harris.Being only 15 at the time, Minnie was still in training and did not perform the lead chores for the group until the last two realeases. "I spent every day after school, just about, going to the studio and practising and rehearsing," said Riperton, "and I really loved it. I was still studying voice, but after a while it came down to a choice. My teacher wanted to put me in Junior Lyric Opera, but I was offered to go on tour and things like that, and God, I couldn't pass that up." "We wore those little chiffon dresses, they were sort of rust orange-red. We used to break out into this pantomime routine when we were on stage. In those days, the '60s, you did a lot of pantomiming. We really looked cute." The Gems made records under their own name and served as the company's 'chick chorus' for studio work, where Minnie Riperton earned 10 dollars a recording backing such performers as Etta James, Little Milton and Jackie Ross. She also put bread on the table by working as a receptionist for Chess (the company liked to give its recording artists steady work, albeit of a more prosaic sort). Riperton got to sing her first feature lead on a Gems release from December of 1964, on Love For Christmas and its secularized flip-side version, All Of It. She doesn't soar on the record, but her easily recognizable pretty soprano jumps out of the grooves. The very next release, Happy New Love, from 1965, also featured Riperton, in which her lovely young girl's voice evokes perfectly the teenage sensibility. The Gems, alas, failed to achieve much more than local success, and the group dissolved in 1966. Riperton continued with Chess as a single act, performing under a silly show business pseudonym, Andrea Davis. Her one release under that name, Lonely Girl, is a magnificent performance, though, in which she stunningly showcases her vocal gymnastics and unreal range. The song was a local hit in Chicago in 1966. In 1967 Riperton left the world of R&B to join the psychedelic rock group Rotary Connection, the brainchild of young Marshall Chess.
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