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 Minnie Riperton (8 November 1947 - 12 July 1979) will be forever associated in the public's mind with her #1 pop hit, Lovin' You, from 1975. She seemed like a fresh new talent when Epic Records signed her the previous year, but Riperton had brought an amazingly rich recording history to the label, one that included almost a decade of stunning earlier recordings for the legendary Chess label. First singing R&B in a girl group called the Gems and then rock as a lead vocalist of the progressive band Rotary Connection, she established herself as once-in-a-generation singer with a soaring operatic coloratura voice. Nothing like her had been heard since Yma Sumac in the 1950s, and after her nothing like Minnie was heard again until Mariah Carey in the 1990s.Riperton was born on the South Side of Chicago on November 8, 1947, and was the youngest of eight children. When she was 10 years of age, her mother signed her up at the Lincoln Center in the Oakwood community (one of the poorest and roughest in Chicago), "Lincoln Center was a great center for a lot of black people," recalled Riperton to journalist Al Rudis. "I studied toe and ballet for years, long before I was singing, and arts and crafts." "When I first started music training, my voice teacher there, Marion Jeffery, taught me about breathing for months and months, learning how to hold vowels and hear them and things like that. Then we got into songs. They were classical, mostly. I studied until I was about 16, but I got swayed off my path once I got a little rock 'n roll dangling in front of my eyes."
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