Darlene Love

When Love was in high school, she was personally invited to sing with a girl group called The Blossoms, who started to work with renowned producer, Phil Spector. Love developed her reputation as a singer with her strong voice that earned her plenty of work as a singer for hire with Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick, Elvis Presley and Tom Jones. The first single that Love sang the lead vocals on was a track called “He’s a Rebel”, the single shot to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Still with The Blossoms, they contributed vocals to some huge hits in the 1960s such as “Be My Baby”, “Monster Mash” and Frank Sinatra’s famous rendition of “That’s Life”. She also released “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” which peaked at number 11 in 1962.

In the 1970s, Love worked as a background singer, but took a break to raise her family. She featured on the song “Basketball Jones” which made it to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. When Love came back in the 1980s, she went back to her gospel roots on recordings, and sang “OOO Wee Baby” in The Idolmaker, a film that was released in 1980. She featured as a singer of U2’s cover of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”, and in 1990 she released an album called “Paint Another Picture”, unfortunately it didn’t make the charts. She released a song called “All Alone on Christmas” which was written by Steven Van Zandt and made it to the Home Alone 2: Lost in New York soundtrack. Her singing made it to the soundtrack of the film Jingle All the Way too. It was December 15th 2010 that Love was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.