Joan Armatrading

Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, (, born 9 December 1950 ) is a Kittitian-English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

A three-time Grammy Award nominee, Armatrading has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist.

Joan Armatrading, the third of six children, was born in 1950 in the town of Basseterre in what was then the British colony Saint Christopher and Nevis.

Her father was a carpenter and her mother a housewife.

When she was three years old, her parents moved with their two eldest boys to Birmingham in England, sending Joan to live with her grandmother on the Caribbean island of Antigua.

In early 1958, at the age of seven, she joined her parents in Brookfields, then a district of Birmingham.

(The area, now mostly demolished, has been absorbed into the district of Hockley.) Her father had played in a band in his youth, later forbidding his children from touching his guitar.

At about the age of 14 Armatrading began writing songs by setting her own limericks to music on a piano that her mother had purchased as "a piece of furniture".

Armatrading then began teaching herself guitar after her mother had bought her one that was worth £3 from a pawn shop in exchange for two prams.

Armatrading left school at the age of 15 to help support her family.

She lost her first job (as a typist and comptometer operator) after taking her guitar to work and playing it during tea-breaks.

Armatrading first performed in a concert at Birmingham University for her brother at the age of about 16.

She only knew her own songs, but her brother asked her to perform something that would be familiar to the audience; she chose "The Sound of Silence".

She then performed her own songs around the local area with a friend from school, and played bass- and rhythm-guitar at local clubs.

In 1968 Armatrading joined a touring production of the stage musical Hair.

There she met the lyricist Pam Nestor in 1970, and they worked together on Armatrading's debut album Whatever's for Us, released by Cube Records in 1972.

Nestor wrote the lyrics to eleven of the 14 songs on the album, while Armatrading wrote the lyrics to three of them, performed all the vocals, wrote all the music and played an array of instruments on the album.

Although Nestor was credited as co-lyricist, Cube regarded Armatrading as the more likely star material.

These events produced a tension that broke up the partnership.

On 31 October 1972, Armatrading appeared on the BBC Radio 1 John Peel Show performing "Head of the Table", "Spend A Little Time", "Child Star" and "Whatever's For Us".

She sang and played acoustic guitar and piano.

Between 1972 and 1976, Armatrading made a total of eight appearances in session for the John Peel show, and the decade saw her become the first Black British female singer-songwriter to enjoy international success.

In 1973 Cube released on the Fly label (catalogue: Bug 31) Armatrading's first single, "Lonely Lady" (with lyrics by Nestor), a song that had not been included on the album.

It proved unsuccessful in the charts, and a period of inactivity for Armatrading followed while she extricated herself from her contract with Cube.

The single was subsequently withdrawn by Cube and re-released as a promotional single in the US by Armatrading's new label A&M Records, the same year (as A&M1452).

In January 1974 she appeared again on the John Peel Show.

Performing "Some Sort of Love Song", "Lonely Lady" and "Freedom", she again sang and played acoustic guitar and piano, but was accompanied by supporting musicians Snowy White (guitar), Mike Tomich (bass) and Brian Glassock (drums).

In 1975, Armatrading was free to sign with A&M Records, and issued the album Back to the Night, which she promoted on tour with six-piece English jazz-pop group The Movies.

Armatrading credited English singer Elkie Brooks on the sleeve notes as she had cooked for Armatrading and the band in the studio while they had been making the album, which was produced by Brooks' then husband Pete Gage.

A major publicity relaunch in 1976 and the involvement of producer Glyn Johns propelled her next album, Joan Armatrading, into the Top 20 and spawned the Top-10 hit single "Love and Affection".

The album mixed acoustic work with jazz-influenced material, and this style was retained for the 1977 follow-up Show Some Emotion, also produced by Glyn Johns, as was 1978's To the Limit.

On 14 May 1977, Armatrading appeared as the musical guest on NBC's Saturday Night Live.

She performed "Love and Affection" and "Down to Zero".

These albums included songs which became staples of Armatrading's live shows, including "Willow", "Down to Zero", "Tall in the Saddle", and "Kissin' and a Huggin. Also at this time Armatrading wrote and performed "The Flight of the Wild Geese", which was used during the opening- and end-titles of the 1978 war film The Wild Geese. The song was included on the soundtrack album for the film, originally released by A&M Records, later released under licence as a Cinephile DVD. A live album entitled Steppin' Out was released in 1979.

In 1980, Armatrading revised her playing style and released Me Myself I, a harder rock- and pop-oriented album produced by Richard Gottehrer, who had previously produced albums for Blondie.

The album became Armatrading's highest ever charting album both in the UK and the US, while the title track became her second UK Top 40 hit single.

In that year, she performed on Rockpalast night.

The same pop style as on her previous album, now coupled with synthesisers, was also evident on the 1981 album Walk Under Ladders and 1983's The Key.

She received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996.

In a recording career spanning nearly 50 years, Armatrading has released 20 studio albums, as well as several live albums and compilations.