Lady Bianca

While primarily a blues vocalist, Lady Bianca first earned notice as a session singer on a wide range of projects including recordings from Van Morrison, Frank Zappa and Merle Haggard. Born Bianca Thornton in Kansas City, Missouri on August 8, 1953, she was influenced by gospel as a child and studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music before lending her contralto to the role of Billie Holiday in an acclaimed production of Jon Hendrick's Evolution of the Blues; in the early '80s, she appeared on Morrison LPs including Beautiful Vision and Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, and also backed blues legends like John Lee Hooker and Willie Dixon. In the late '80s, Lady Bianca teamed with songwriter Stanley Lippitt, an alliance which yielded a number of tracks that grabbed the attention of Joe Louis Walker and in turn resulted in a record deal; she made her solo debut in 1995 with Best Kept Secret. Her long-awaited follow up appeared six years later on Rooster Blues.