Linda Tillery

Linda "Tui" Tillery (born September 2, 1948) is an American singer, percussionist, producer, songwriter, and music arranger.

She began her professional singing career at age 19 with the Bay Area rock band The Loading Zone.

Tillery was born in 1948 to parents who migrated from Texas to San Francisco during World War II.

She was born on the block of Fell Street where the SFJAZZ Center currently stands.

Her father (Horace) was a carpenter whose first job after moving to California was at the Hunters Point Shipyard.

Her mother (Eva L.) was a seamstress and later worked at a job pressing garments in a Chinatown sweatshop.

Neither of her parents were musicians, but she had two uncles who played cornet.

Tillery says her parents were terrible singers but they loved music and had a large collection of 78 rpm records.

The music she heard as a young person in her household ranged from Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan to rural and urban blues.

By age 2, her favorite singer was Dinah Washington, whose recording of "That's All I Want From You" was particularly loved by Tillery and was the first song she memorized.

Tillery claims that she learned how to read by looking at the labels from her parents' record collection.

"Basie was on Verve. Dinah was on Mercury".

She had memorized Basie's arrangement of "April in Paris" by age 4.

She also admired Ethel Merman's big voice, going into her parents' acoustically-pleasing bathroom and trying to imitate Merman's song "There's No Business Like Show Business".

Tillery is a self-taught singer, but her formal music education began at age 13 when she studied the classical bass at Lowell High School in San Francisco.

She was allowed to play the drum kit and other instruments such as the bassoon in school because her teacher recognized her superior musical abilities.

Also around age 13, Tillery attended a picnic in Pittsburg, California where she saw Vi Redd playing alto saxophone.

Tillery says she was mesmerized by Redd and that experience enlightened her to "be able to play whatever instrument I chose. I wanted to sing, but not just as a centerpiece. I wanted to be a unique voice".

Tillery graduated from high school in 1966 and worked for a year while also attending City College of San Francisco.

She says her parents always wanted her to be a business major but she says she "got bored very quickly" with college.

She dropped out to begin singing professionally.

Tillery first came to prominence as the lead singer in San Francisco group The Loading Zone starting in 1968.

The band had just signed with RCA Records and was looking for a new lead singer, so they placed a classified ad in the San Francisco Chronicle stating "Wanted: One Soul Singer" which was also the title of a Johnnie Taylor album that Tillery enjoyed.

At least six singers had auditioned for the job but the 19-year-old Tillery had an edge because she had phoned beforehand to make sure she was what the band was seeking.

Years later, Loading Zone founder Paul Fauerso described the hiring of Tillery:

"She said, 'I'm kind of big, like Big Mama Thornton, and I play harmonica…. She walked through the door in a post office uniform, with little white cat-eyed glasses, and I said, that's our girl. She just looked right. We evolved as a dance band with a fusion of R&B and rock, and we ended up as a psychedelic soul band once we added Linda. She was singing for us by the time we opened for Cream at Winterland. Her mother made her a floor-length ruffled red leather cape. It was very dramatic."

Tillery recalled her audition day with humor.

Loading Zone guitarist Steve Dowler went to Tillery's house to pick her up.

"Her mother saw a hippie at the door and refused to let him in".

Linda with the Loading Zone frequently played popular Bay Area Night Clubs like Keystone Berkeley, Frenche's in Hayward and The Odyssey Room in Sunnyvale.

While The Loading Zone occasionally performed as headliners in concert venues, they were more well known as a popular opening act for other big-name bands.

They toured with Vanilla Fudge and The Jeff Beck Group, and opened Bay Area shows for many other bands and performers including The Who on their first American tour, Jethro Tull, Sam & Dave, Cream at San Francisco's famed Winterland Ballroom and Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin at Bill Graham's historic venue The Fillmore.

Of the gig with Big Brother, Tillery and the Loading Zone won over Joplin's fans so much that Joplin told others after the show that Tillery was never allowed again to be on the same bill with her.

The Loading Zone's style has been described as psychedelic soul, and they have been compared somewhat to Sly and the Family Stone.

She is recognized as a pioneer in women's music, with her second solo album titled Linda Tillery released on Olivia Records in 1977.

In addition to performing, she was the producer on three of Olivia's first eight albums.

Within the women's music genre, she has collaborated with June Millington, Deidre McCalla, Barbara Higbie, Holly Near, Margie Adam, and others.

In the early 1990s, she began exploring the roots music of enslaved Africans and the African diaspora, forming the group The Cultural Heritage Choir.

Tillery was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1997 for Best Musical Album for Children.

Tillery has been a professional musician for her entire adult life and has had a long career as a backing or supporting vocalist for mainstream artists as diverse as Santana, Bobby McFerrin, Huey Lewis and the News and the Turtle Island String Quartet.