Kathy Sledge belongs to one of the biggest ever sister acts to grace the pop world.
Sister Sledge has enjoyed worldwide acclaim with hits that have become dancefloor anthems across the globe, including Lost in Music, We Are Family, Thinking of You, He’s the Greatest Dancer and Frankie.
In the UK alone, the band scored five UK Top 10 hits, and 12 UK top 40 singles, as well as three Top 40 albums, selling millions of records worldwide.
We chatted to the super-lovely Kathy Sledge ahead of her appearance at Uptown Festival in Cardiff on September 15, where she is performing alongside acts including Aswad, Maxi Priest and Desmond Dekker’s Aces.
How are you Kathy?I’m having a blast, the tour’s going well.
We had a very brief interview with you at Rewind South in 2019, it’s lovely to see you again. You had a most amazing set, and we loved seeing you get people up to dance to He’s the Greatest Dancer!I still do that, that’s the best part of the show because there is always a greatest dancer in the audience and sometimes they’re hilarious, but they don’t know it and it works. I think the reason that works so well is because when you grab someone from the audience, everyone in the crowd feels like that’s them up there, so they connect, it’s a cool thing.
You’re performing at the Uptown Festival in Cardiff on Sept 15 with Aswad and Maxi Priest, among others, what can fans expect? We’re looking forward to Cardiff because we were there a long time ago and what I remember most, was the crowd was on fire. They really know how to party in Cardiff! They remind me of the Phily crowd or the New York crowd. I am so looking forward to that.
You’ve had some amazing hits over the year, real classics. What was it like going through the musical journey in the 70s and 80s with your sisters Debbie, Joni and Kim by your side? We all grew up singing really, the world got to see us after We Were Family, but we were a family growing up – a household of five girls, because we have a fifth sister who is my best friend to this day. Carol would always step in when Debbie was on maternity leave, so that would be around six times that Carol stepped in, it is a big family! Carole is a retired educator. My sister Kim and I talk about a reunion every so often. Growing up with them, no pun intended, but it was a case of We Are Family – that song was actually written about us by the then record company president who was describing us to Nile Rodgers. We were going to work together and they wanted to know what we were like, and he goes, “Well they’re family. They flock together like birds of a feather”. They wrote these notes down and they actually wrote the song, so it’s a portrait of how close we were as sisters growing up. And I’m actually writing my memoirs now, which I’m very excited about, Memoir of a Little Sister. There are so many things that made us so close, growing up in a single parent household. My father and mother divorced when I was about four years old and he was one of the first African-Americans to tap-dance on Broadway, Fred and Sledge.
Your grandmother Viola was an opera singer as well!My grandmother Viola was a protégé to Mary McLeod Bethune, who we know, historically, was a major activist, educator and she started the Bethune Cookman colleges, African-American colleges in the United States. My grandmother was the opera singer who would tour with the Bethune-Cookman choir My grandmother was actually the one who instilled an appreciation of music to us. I think, my grandmother was probably the first one who knew we could harmonise, I don’t think my mum even knew that. I was four or three years old and my grandmother used to teach us these beautifu hymns that we’d sing in church, and she started giving us our harmony parts. Singing in concerts got me through college, so it’s always been a part of my life.
During your career with your sisters, you must have had some fun times?We had big fights too! You know sisters. We would joke sometimes on the road, because we really did grow up on the road, but the one stipulation was our grades had to be over the top. And my sister Joni, God bless her, who is no longer with us, Joni’s IQ was so high, she was very bright. All of us, our grades were always en pointe, but that was the stipulation - that if we started dropping with our grades, we’d have to stop.
I think, we had lots of fun together on the road. We’d joke sometimes because we were always together and we would share double rooms together in the hotel, and I remember going one time to my mum, saying “Can we get our own rooms? We need space!” We would sometimes, and this is going to sound crazy, we would drive in the countryside in the UK, because we’d had a hit record here (Mama Never Told Me) when I was 13, so we were here a lot. We would drive on the tour bus and we would look out on the sheep and we would look at each other, and we’d say we feel like those sheep, a herd of cattle. We would make cow sounds, we may as well be a herd of cows. It’s funny because we would do a lot of fun sisterly things, we were very close. We had our madness too, still do. We have issues but the thing I’m most proud of is that that song is written about us, and that song brought the world together, and I know where that song came from.
What kept you grounded Kathy? Was it that togetherness, that family spirit?I think that when you are in a family group, it keeps you grounded because you know, if you start acting a certain way around your sisters or brothers, they’re gonna be like…what?! I think that a lot of solo artists, I think people who work around them, have to cater to them but I think that your family’s not gonna cater to you. We would always take my grandmother travelling with us when I was very young. My grandmother was my best friend, and because of it, everyone that we toured with, and we toured with just about everyone, we always had the utmost respect because our grandmother was with us all the time!
I remember touring with Rick James for four months and we never even knew he got high! He loved our grandmother and he was a great guy. And Bill Cosby, he was like a mentor to us. After the shows, we’d all go (and Natalie Cole) and sit in the dressing room and he’d give us advice, and my grandmother and mother, so we were always truly a family who travelled together.
In the later years, there’s the madness. I always say, in my memoir, I say those are the Lost in Music years when it got a little crazy with some of the jealousies. I think that, like any other family, we are normal, we have madness.
Was there a pressure to stay together as a band because of that song We Are Family?I think the pressure came with me being the youngest and singing mostly all of the hits. That became an underlying feeling of being uncomfortable because there were jealousies, there still are in certain places. I remember touring with Michael Jackson for about two months, we toured with The Jacksons, I was very young. I wanted to go up to Michael and say: “Do they do you like they do me?” because when you are the youngest, and you are the signature voice, there’s pressure there. You feel a little guilty because the producers would always look at me and go: “We want you to sing it” and inside I’d go “ooh” coz I wanted to sing it but at the same time, I would think of my sisters and go “I’m sure that their destiny is not to be a back-out singer”.
I always tell new bands or groups The Beatles were one of the hugest bands ever and still are and I think forever will be. I think Ringo Starr’s presence was just as huge as Paul McCartney’s. I think if bands really realise the importance of everyone’s presence even if they’re not upfront, then I think you can do amazing things like The Rolling Stones. Of course, in my situation, I did deal, and I think a lot of singers deal with jealousies with sibling rivalries. Again, I think that’s a very healthy way to look at it - what makes the band what it is, is every part of it…but it is nice singing up front!
There was another sister act in the 80s, the Pointer Sisters. Did you know them? Were there any rivalries?I loved them. We were proteges to them. In fact, when my sister Joni passed, Ruth called me up coz they lost their sister too. Ruth called me and her heart went out to me, and she knew what I was going through because I was going through these jealousy things, and she gave me great advice. And another all-girl group The Emotions, I remember when they announced they were gonna break up years ago. We went to them as sisters and we were like, “You guys can’t, your sound is great”. And they’ve repeated that in different articles, that we reached out to them. I think the camaraderie of being in another girl band, I never felt a sense of jealousy or rivalry, only in my own I felt it. And it’s interesting what I’m about to say because I think they went through some things internally. I think especially if you are in a family, you are so close. Only family can go through those things but at the same time, there is an unconditional love that you do have as a family and that’s the balance, I guess.
You performed in Zaire in 1974 at the Rumble in the Jungle between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman. What was that like? Did you meet Mohammed Ali?I actually followed him around like a fly! I did get a chance to meet him. What I loved about him was his presence, it was beyond enormous. And he was one of the kindest people, he was funny, he was a jokester, we know that. I will never forget that moment in my lifetime, to be able to travel to Zaire. That was a huge part of my life, it was one of the first times I’d ever travelled abroad. And if you google Rumble In The Jungle now, you’ll see this little girl running around every now and then in the dark with ponytails, and that’s me! I also met James Brown, and now his daughter Deanna Brown, she has carried his legend. She’s one of the nicest, kindest people you’ll ever meet and we’re pretty good friends through the music. She keeps his legacy alive. Every Thanksgiving, he used to always give out to families in need, the turkeys, the dinners, and she still does that every year, and sometimes I have supported that with her. There’s so many legendary things that he’s done, and she carries that legend.
*For tickets to the Uptown Festival, visit
uptownfestival.co.uk
