The Lady, the Melody, and the Word

by Shirley Caesar

By the time she was ten years old, Shirley Caesar had already made a name for herself. The tiny singer in pigtails and bobby socks was known throughout the Carolinas and Virginia as "Baby Shirley," and her foot-stomping, bring-down-the-house style was in demand for church services and revivals. To date, Shirley Caesar has had an astonishing career spanning four decades. This is Shirley's own story of those years, told in her intimate and passionate style. "Shirley Caesar remains one of the few singers from black gospel music's 1930s-60s golden age who continues with an active, successful recording career. Anyone who has ever heard any of Caesar's heart-tugging story songs should easily be able to imagine the reminiscences in her autobiography, written in the same personable but matronly tone she lends to her music. She's too much of a lady to dish much dirt about her trials and triumphs on the gospel highway, where she sang with the Caravans and as a soloist. But her run-ins with racis