Richard J Dalton
One of the most influential players in musician’s rights is coming to Seattle during Pride Weekend. Martha Wash is playing “The Cuff Pride Street Party” on June 26th.
Martha was first known in the mainstream in the 1980’s for the hit “It’s Raining Men”, as half of the disco-dance group The Weather Girls. Later, when the Weather Girls disbanded, Wash continued to lend her vocals to various dance and house music tracks—however things were not necessarily on her terms.
Martha apparently has dance music in her blood. She has the voice that everybody wanted. However, the boy’s club didn’t like her image. The TL;DR version is that she recorded 5 more worldwide hits, and got proper credit for zero worldwide hits—and other “more marketable” women mimed to her vocals. Here’s the rundown:
- For the group Black Box, she recorded the vocals for 6 tracks, 3 hit the charts in a big way. Her vocals were mimed to by a model named Katrin. These are the hits that covered up Martha’s name:
- “Everybody Everybody”
- “Strike It Up”
- “I Don’t Know Anybody Else”
- For the group Seduction, she recorded the hit “You’re My One and Only (True Love)”. To market the single, a 3-girl group that was “visually marketable” was quickly thrown together. The 3 girls went on to record great tracks on their own, but their first hit is actually Martha Wash’s vocal.
- For the group “C+C Music Factory”, Martha recorded the mammoth hit “Everybody Dance Now”, which was initially credited to Zelma Davis (who, herself, is quite talented).
“Everybody Dance Now” was a high profile track—and the controversy that followed made it to the MTV screens. After battling it out with Martha’s peeps, the record label made the unprecedented request that the artist be listed as “C+C Music Factory featuring Freedom Williams and Martha Wash as visualized by Zelma Davis”. This brought the issue to every early-90’s kid’s attention, changing things forever. This is probably why the “[insert DJ name] featuring [vocalist’s name]” concept exists to this day.
If you’re up to appreciate music history and artist’s rights, along with a positive Pride vibe, check out Martha outside of the Cuff on the Sunday of Pride. Hopefully she’ll share some words of wisdom within her hit-filled set list.
- (Bonus: Her new music is super fly.)
- (Bonus #2: JES will throw down a set as well)
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