Evelyn "Champagne" King parents both worked for a record company and when their daughter joined them one day she went to the bathroom and began singing where she was overheard by a producer who told her she was going to be a star.

It’s a fairytale story, but a true one. Evelyn King came from a family who were in the music/entertainment business, her uncle was an actor who had appeared in the first Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess and then went on to work with Lena Horne.

Her mother was a manager for a soul act called Quality Red and her father was a resident backing singer at The Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York, so it’s not too much of a surprise that Evelyn was going to follow suit.

Evelyn was born in the Bronx in July 1960 but the family moved and she was raised in Philadelphia.

Her parents both worked at Philadelphia International records and when Evelyn was old enough she got a job at the label as a cleaner.

It was when an in-house producer, Theodore T. Life, a former member of the band Instant Funk, heard this voice coming from the ladies room that he discovered someone special.

“I was cleaning the bathroom and singing Sam Cooke’s song A Change Is Gonna Come and this producer said he loved my voice and was gonna make me a star”, recalled King.

As a child her nickname was Bubbles due to the fact that as a baby she used to create spit and blow bubbles with it, which, when it came to preparing for her debut single and album, was changed to Champagne.

Her debut album was called Smooth Talk and the lead single was Shame, a song written by Reuben Cross & John H. Fitch Jr. with lyrics seemingly about a man who is just using his woman for sex but she doesn’t want to believe it - ‘My mother says you’re playing a game and what you do to me is a Shame. Ooh, gonna love you just the same, mama just don’t understand’.

“I was only 15 and I’s singing ‘Momma just don’t understand how I love my man’, my father wanted to shot somebody,” laughed King in an interview with Jason Lewis at L.A Sentinel.

“My parents were listening to the words, but I wasn’t paying no attention.

There’s a lot of that song that I never paid attention to lyrically because I just loved singing – and I would sing it.”

“I remember being at the Philly studios and Theo said he was going to introduce me to two guys who were Reuben Cross & John H. Fitch Jr. I was nervous and as skinny as a piece of straw and I just stood there and he said ‘I want you to sing this song we’re written to see how you can do it’. So I just started singing Shame and they loved it.”

The version that appears on Smooth Talk is quite different from the single that made the chart.

It was only when two New York club DJs, Al Garrison and David Todd, gave the song a re-mix, beefed up the beat and extended it to a 12″ single version running to just over six and a half minutes that it gained airplay and became a hit single.

In America it reached the top 10 on the singles chart, the dance chart and the R&B chart as well as peaking number seven in Belgium.

In the UK, despite heavy club play – and I was one of them – it only just scraped into the UK singles chart at number 39 but spent an incredible 23 weeks on the chart. The nearest anyone has come to that was in 2016 when Joel Adams’ hit Please Don’t Go spent 20 weeks on the chart but climbed no higher than number 50. Can you hum it?!

She later signed to RCA and released several songs including I’m in Love which was the first to crack the UK top 30 but her biggest hit came the following year when club favourite Love Come Down reached number seven.

Comments:

starz gonzales

I can't stop grooving to this track...somebody help!

Wonder B

I almost forgot how young she was when she burst on the scene with that unforgettable hit!

Michelle Levick

Just loved this. We all got up and danced when this one came on!

HUSKEY BOY

WOW, that brought back some memories , what a singer and so young ...thanks.

Carlos Faria

What a voice !!

Bronzepony4u

The girls an ICON...............

Ramona Haygood

YEA I REMEMBER THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL.  EVELYN 'CHAMPAGNE' KING.  SING IT GIRL.

Martin Welch

ONe of my all time favourite tracks to dance to - thanks for sharing and first time I ever saw her singing it live - fantastic :-)

Rosemarie Clarke

Multi-talented Evelyn King WOW!