Gospel | Memphis, TN
Elizabeth King is a sacred soul and gospel singer from Memphis, Tennessee.
Possessed of a powerful, quaking contralto, she has led church services and performed weekly on gospel radio since the 1960s. King sang from the time she could talk. At age nine, she took seriously ill and her mother literally carried her into the doctor’s office, but they couldn’t diagnose her illness. In bed that evening, feverish, she began singing. Her mother asked her to stop and rest, but she just kept on. The next morning, she climbed out of bed and knew there was a higher power that had intervened on her behalf. Music was the vehicle that carried King through that long night, and it became the joyful expression of her faith. She has sung in church ever since.
In 1969, she was in a serious automobile accident. A drunk driver T-boned her vehicle, causing serious injuries. She spent 17 days in the hospital and was told by attending doctors she would never walk again. She did. King attributed her miraculous healing to God. She signed a deal with the Designer label and began issuing singles, starting with 1969’s “Testify.”
In 1970, she began fronting the all-male Gospel Souls and touring. Gospel DJ, Rev. Juan D. Sipp founded the D-Vine Spirituals label in 1972 to showcase local and regional talent. A year later, King cut the hit “I Heard the Voice” for D-Vine. King cut her first single, “Testify,” on the Designer label in 1969, as well as a few others. She signed to D-Vine Spirituals in 1970 as the frontwoman for the all-male Gospel Souls. The group recorded five singles and an album between 1970 and 1973 Elizabeth King & The Gospel Souls cut five singles for D-Vine Spirituals before King decided to leave the music business to devote her energies to raising her growing family — she bore 15 children in total. She continued to sing in church and on the radio. During her decades away, King was approached with offers from several labels but declined them.
Then, in 2019, Rev, Juan D Shipp contacted her. Rev. Shipp was working with Bible & Tire Recording Company label boss Bruce Watson. In 2019, Watson established the Bible & Tire Recording Company and built a new studio in Memphis. He entered into a working relationship that involved restoring the D-Vine Spirituals master tapes. Watson had become as interested in recording modern-day sacred soul from the mid-South as he was in modern-day Delta blues recordings for Fat Possum decades earlier
Living in the Last Days was issued in April 2021, more than 50 years after the release of King’s first single. In June the following year, King reteamed to the studio, and I Got A Love was released in 2023, King again re-entered Memphis’s Delta Sonic Sound with a star-studded guest list and the result was a ten-song set titled Soul Provider that was released in April 2024.