Mable John: Tamla's First Female Signee, a Stax Hit and a Divinity Degree

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Mable John was born in 1930 in Bastrop, Louisiana, the eldest of at least nine children, and moved with her family to Arkansas, where her brother Little Willie John was born, and then to Detroit in 1941. After Pershing High she worked at the Friendship Mutual Insurance Agency, run by Bertha Gordy, Berry Gordy's mother. Bertha later steered her to her son, who coached her and accompanied her on piano at local clubs. In 1959 she opened for Billie Holiday at the Flame Show Bar in what became Holiday's last Detroit show, and that year she became the first female artist signed to Gordy's Tamla label.

Her blues singles, starting with Who Wouldn't Love a Man Like That in 1960, did not catch on as the label moved toward teen pop, and Gordy dropped her in 1962. She joined Ray Charles' Raelettes, then signed with Stax in 1966, where Your Good Thing (Is About to End) reached No. 6 R&B and No. 95 pop. In 1968 she returned to the Raelettes, a move the hosts frame as choosing steady work over the solo gamble. From 1973 she managed gospel acts, and in 1993 she earned a Doctor of Divinity degree from the Crenshaw Christian Center in Los Angeles.

Future members of the Supremes and Martha and the Vandellas sang backup on her early sessions.
Her charity, Joy Community Outreach to End Homelessness, fed and clothed more than 100 people a day.
She co-wrote the 2006 novel Sanctified Blues with David Ritz.
She played a veteran blues singer in John Sayles' 2007 film Honeydripper and appeared in 20 Feet from Stardom.
She received a Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Award in 1994 and died in Los Angeles on August 25, 2022, at 91.

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