Della Reese

Della Reese, born Delloreese Patricia Early on July 6, 1931, in the Black Bottom neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan, was an American singer, actress, television personality, author, and ordained minister. The daughter of Richard Thaddeus Early, a steelworker, and Nellie Mitchelle, a cook, Reese grew up in a household where she demonstrated an early passion for performance. She joined her local church choir at age six and, at thirteen, was heard by gospel performer Mahalia Jackson, who selected her to replace a vocalist in her road show. Reese toured with Jackson across the United States for three summers during her adolescent years. She later joined a Detroit-based gospel group, the Meditation Singers, while simultaneously attending Cass Technical High School, from which she graduated at age fifteen, and subsequently enrolled in psychology studies at Wayne State University in 1949. She left college after her mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and it was during this period that she adopted the professional name Della Reese.

After departing the Meditation Singers, Reese pursued secular music and found work at Detroit's Oriel Bowling Alley, where she entered and won a local talent competition. The prize was a one-week engagement at The Flame, a New York City nightclub, which extended into an eighteen-week run. That extended engagement brought her to the attention of agent Lee Magid, who helped her join the Erskine Hawkins orchestra in 1953. Magid also facilitated her first official recording contract with Jubilee Records. Her 1955 debut-label single, "In the Still of the Night," sold 500,000 copies. She recorded a total of fifteen singles and six albums for Jubilee through 1959, including her 1956 debut LP My Melancholy Baby, the gospel collection Amen! (1958), the live album A Date with Della Reese at Mr. Kelly's in Chicago (1958), and The Story of the Blues (1959), which combined blues standards with spoken word narration by Reese on the genre's history. Her Jubilee single "And That Reminds Me," an English adaptation of the Italian instrumental "Autumn Concerto," reached number twelve on the US Billboard Hot 100, number fifteen in Australia, and number five in Canada, and sold over one million copies.

In August 1959, Reese signed a long-term contract with RCA Victor, where she was paired with production team Hugo and Luigi. Her first RCA single, "Don't You Know?," adapted from "Musetta's Waltz" in La bohème, reached number two on the US Hot 100 and number one on the US R&B chart, selling over one million copies. Her second RCA single, "Not One Minute More," also charted on the US Hot 100. RCA Victor issued several additional albums, including the top-forty-charting LP Della in 1960. Throughout the early 1960s, Reese made frequent appearances on nationally broadcast television programs, including The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Those appearances contributed to the creation of her own talk show, Della, which ran for nearly 200 episodes between 1969 and 1970, making her the first Black woman to host her own talk show. She continued recording through the 1970s with albums released on ABC–Paramount, Avco Embassy, and LMI, and began an acting career during that decade in films such as Psychic Killer and the television series Chico and the Man.

Reese became an ordained minister during the 1980s and began leading regular sermons. In 1983, she appeared on Broadway in Blues in the Night. She returned to gospel music after forming the group Brilliance, which released an album in 1985 that received a Grammy nomination. Reese appeared in Eddie Murphy's 1989 film Harlem Nights and co-starred with Redd Foxx in the short-lived 1991 television series The Royal Family. Her most prominent acting role came when she was cast as Tess in the CBS series Touched by an Angel, opposite Roma Downey. Premiering in 1994, the show became one of the highest-rated programs on CBS for several years, and Reese remained with it until 2003. During the 1990s she also released the Grammy-nominated gospel album My Soul Feels Better Right Now (1998) and published her autobiography, Angels Along the Way, in 1997, followed by four additional books through 2012. She appeared in the 2005 film Beauty Shop and starred in several CBS television films during the 2000s before retiring from acting in 2014. Reese died on November 19, 2017.