Celia Yancey -

Celia Yancey (November 26, 1942 – January 16, 2021) was an American soul-rock singer who released the 1976 album Yancey on GRT (U.S.) and Bellaphon (Germany). In 1982, the album reappeared as Southern Lady on Brylen Records.

Background

Celia Yancey was born Celia Maxey in Brandon, Mississippi. Family recollection traced her singing gift to her grandmother Mary Webb Maxey. At the University of Mississippi she earned a bachelor’s degree and appears in the 1965 Ole Miss yearbook as a member of the University Singers, an auditioned campus choir that handled concerts and university functions. Those college years place her earliest documented music activity in Oxford before marriage took her to west Tennessee.

After graduation she married Billy Yancey and settled in Somerville, Tennessee. In 1973, she directed the Fayette County Sesquicentennial Pageant. Her recorded path began after Memphis producer Jim Dickinson heard her sing in Oxford and invited her to record at Ardent Studios in Memphis, where she opened for a pre-fame Billy Joel at the piano man’s landmark show at the Lafayette, an intimate venue in Overton Square.

Yancey

Celia Yancey released Yancey in 1976 on GRT in the US and Bellaphon in Germany.

Yancey encompasses mid-tempo stompers, slow-burn laments, and one extended, dramatic centerpiece. The album features prolific Southern session players enhanced with the Nashville Strings and the Memphis and Muscle Shoals horns.

“Makin’ Music For Money” and “Race Horse” are blunt belted numbers with clipped accents and rough-edged leads that devour each line. “Wake Me Up Before You Leave” and “Fallen Angel” draw inward through piano-led reflection, measured phrasing, and swelling backdrops with enhanced emotional weight.

“Southern Lady” and “Roll Um Easy” are warm and direct with full vowel holds and a loose sway built for open-hearted delivery. “Honey Bee (Huh, Huh, Huh, Huh, Huh)” stands as the long-form pressure piece that rises from a dark low simmer to a broad, high-intensity crest.

A1. “Makin’ Music For Money” (3:11) — chugging mid-tempo rocker with belted rasp and clipped horns; written by American songwriter Alex Harvey (not SAHB); first recorded in 1974 by Kenny Rogers & First Edition and given a 1980 new wave treatment by Andrea True.
A2. “Sha, La, La, La, La (I Guess It Was Meant To Be)” (3:16) — Yancey, Ewell Roussell, B. Taylor; piano blues ballad with dobro, twang, and earnest vocals; booming synth-string middle.
A3. “Honey Bee (Huh, Huh, Huh, Huh, Huh)” (7:13) — Yancey, K. Woodley; melodramatic funk-rock epic (in E♭m) with slow wah-wah fade-in, layered with dark piano and strings across a pensive, foreboding cadence. Celia enters (at 2:20) with howling command amid the thickening swell of horns, slithering violins, and her intense caterwaul and octave surges.
A4. “Race Horse” (3:04) — Nell Aspero; mid-tempo R&B piano boogie with raspy vocals and Memphis horn charts across a common chord progression.

B1. “Southern Lady” (3:08) — M. Hazlewood; moderate southern soul belter (in A) with Muscle Shoals-style R&B-style arrangement.
B2. “Wake Me Up Before You Leave” (3:13) — G. Parks; slow ballad with deep breathy vocals across tight rhythmic backing and subdued string interjections.
B3. “If Love Is For The Asking” (3:29) — Yancey, J. Lancaster; moderate country ballad churning strum, refined twang, and full-throated Nashville harmonies.
B4. “Roll Um Easy” (2:55) — Lowell George; rootsy R&B/gospel rendition of the Little Feat number from their 1973 third album Dixie Chicken.
B5. “Fallen Angel” (3:10) — Yancey, Jim Dickinson; reflective piano ballad with Celia’s soulful self-evaluation lifted in heavenly string swells.

Sessions occurred at studios in Memphis (Onyx, Ardent) and Nashville (Quad, Columbia) with producer Ewell Roussell. Veteran Stax soundman Ron Capone co-produced the four Ardent tracks (A1, A4, B2, B4) in succession with albums by Con Funk Shun, Denise LaSalle, Junie Morrison, and Ruby Starr.

Backing players included bassist Henry Strzelecki, drummer Kenny Malone, organist James Brown, pianist–arranger Carl Marsh, and guitarists Reggie Young and Steve Cropper. Marsh and Cropper played recently on the like-minded Lydia, the 1974 album by Cold Blood. Brown played in sequence on titles by Al Green, Ann Peebles, and O.V. Wright.

Ron Capone co-produced A1, A4, B2, and B4, and Gene Eichelberger, Jack Gilmer, Ron Capone, with Ron Reynolds engineered the sessions. Carl Marsh arranged and conducted the string and horn charts, and Masterfonics handled the mastering.

Yancey shows the singer sprawled on an antique chair in a messy, ramshackle living quarters. GRT copies appeared in a gatefold cover with a lyrical inner-spread.

Bellaphon issued “Makin’ Music For Money” (b/w “Race Horse”) as a single in Germany, where Celia mimed the song for local television. “Southern Lady” followed as a second German single (b/w “Honey Bee (Huh, Huh, Huh, Huh, Huh)”). In November 1976, she headlined over Heart on the NW band’s first German tour.

Postlude

In late 1977, Celia Yancey was booked as an opening act for the autumn leg of the Street Survivors tour by Lynyrd Skynyrd, but this was cancelled due to their plane crash. She continued her singing career in Nashville then pivoted to education.

For twenty years she taught elementary school in Middle Tennessee before her 2000 return to Memphis, where she remained in the Memphis City School system until her retirement.

Yancey died on January 16, 2021, at age 78→.

Discography: