Wynona Carr (Cleveland, Ohio, August 23, 1923 – May 12, 1976) was a gospel,… Read Full Bio ↴Wynona Carr (Cleveland, Ohio, August 23, 1923 – May 12, 1976) was a gospel, rhythm & blues and rock & roll singer-songwriter, who recorded as Sister Wynona Carr when performing gospel material.
Wynona Merceris Carr was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where she started out as a gospel singer, forming her own five-piece group The Carr Singers around 1945 and touring the Cleveland/Detroit area. Being tipped by The Pilgrim Travelers, who shared a bill with Carr in the late 1940s, Art Rupe signed her to his Specialty label, giving Carr her new stage name “Sister” Wynona Carr (modelled after pioneering gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe) and cutting some twenty sides with her from 1949 to 1954, including a couple of duets with Specialty’s biggest gospel star at the time, Brother Joe May.
Not having too much success on the charts (except for “The Ball Game” (1952), which became one of Specialty’s best selling gospel records), Carr grew increasingly unhappy with the straight gospel direction of her career and pleaded with Rupe to let her record “pops, jumps, ballads, and semi-blues”. Rupe relented and from 1955 to 1959 Carr recorded two dozen rock & roll and R&B sides for Specialty, which, like her gospel songs, she mostly wrote herself. Despite scoring an R&B hit with “Should I Ever Love Again?” in 1957, overall the change from spiritual to secular music didn’t help Carr much in terms of sales or recognition. Unfortunately she also contracted tuberculosis around this time, which kept her from doing the necessary promotional work and touring for two years, effectively ending her tenure with Specialty in the summer of 1959.
In 1961 Carr signed with Frank Sinatra’s Reprise Records and released an unsuccessful pop album. She moved back to Cleveland, sinking into obscurity and suffering from declining health and depression; she died there in 1976.
Carr’s contralto vocals have a sensual, husky quality quite unusual (or even inappropriate) for gospel singers in her day, which made her eventual switch to R&B and rock & roll seem a logical choice in retrospect. The same goes for her idiosyncratic use of metaphors and themes in her gospel songs: Baseball (“The Ball Game”), boxing (“15 Rounds For Jesus”) and a popular TV show (“Dragnet For Jesus”). This penchant for novelty-like songs also shows in Carr’s later R&B repertoire, for instance “Ding Dong Daddy”, “Nursery Rhyme Rock” and “Boppity Bop (Boogity Boog)”.
Carr’s gospel recordings are very much influenced by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, incorporating blues and jazz stylings and already touching on R&B with her take on Roy Brown’s / Wynonie Harris’ “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, entitled “I Heard The News (Jesus Is Coming Again)”. Her early R&B material (for which she is probably best remembered now) was often uptempo, rock & roll-styled and similar in sound to fellow R&B / rock & roll artists on the Specialty roster like Little Richard, Lloyd Price and Larry Williams, with a strong New Orleans-style backbeat and a rich, warm production. Her final Specialty sessions, conducted by Sonny Bono in 1959, cut down on the rock & roll influences.
Both Carr’s gospel and R&B recordings went largely unappreciated during the time they were released, but found a new audience when Specialty Records released two CDs, covering Carr’s entire output on the label and adding previously unreleased material, such as a recording with Rev. C.L. Franklin (father of Aretha Franklin) and his New Bethel Baptist Church Choir in Detroit.
Sister Wynona Carr
Dragnet For Jesus (Specialty SPCD-7016-2, 1992)
Wynona Carr
Jump Jack Jump! (Specialty SPCD-7048-2, 1993)
Wynona Merceris Carr was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where she started out as a gospel singer, forming her own five-piece group The Carr Singers around 1945 and touring the Cleveland/Detroit area. Being tipped by The Pilgrim Travelers, who shared a bill with Carr in the late 1940s, Art Rupe signed her to his Specialty label, giving Carr her new stage name “Sister” Wynona Carr (modelled after pioneering gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe) and cutting some twenty sides with her from 1949 to 1954, including a couple of duets with Specialty’s biggest gospel star at the time, Brother Joe May.
Not having too much success on the charts (except for “The Ball Game” (1952), which became one of Specialty’s best selling gospel records), Carr grew increasingly unhappy with the straight gospel direction of her career and pleaded with Rupe to let her record “pops, jumps, ballads, and semi-blues”. Rupe relented and from 1955 to 1959 Carr recorded two dozen rock & roll and R&B sides for Specialty, which, like her gospel songs, she mostly wrote herself. Despite scoring an R&B hit with “Should I Ever Love Again?” in 1957, overall the change from spiritual to secular music didn’t help Carr much in terms of sales or recognition. Unfortunately she also contracted tuberculosis around this time, which kept her from doing the necessary promotional work and touring for two years, effectively ending her tenure with Specialty in the summer of 1959.
In 1961 Carr signed with Frank Sinatra’s Reprise Records and released an unsuccessful pop album. She moved back to Cleveland, sinking into obscurity and suffering from declining health and depression; she died there in 1976.
Carr’s contralto vocals have a sensual, husky quality quite unusual (or even inappropriate) for gospel singers in her day, which made her eventual switch to R&B and rock & roll seem a logical choice in retrospect. The same goes for her idiosyncratic use of metaphors and themes in her gospel songs: Baseball (“The Ball Game”), boxing (“15 Rounds For Jesus”) and a popular TV show (“Dragnet For Jesus”). This penchant for novelty-like songs also shows in Carr’s later R&B repertoire, for instance “Ding Dong Daddy”, “Nursery Rhyme Rock” and “Boppity Bop (Boogity Boog)”.
Carr’s gospel recordings are very much influenced by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, incorporating blues and jazz stylings and already touching on R&B with her take on Roy Brown’s / Wynonie Harris’ “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, entitled “I Heard The News (Jesus Is Coming Again)”. Her early R&B material (for which she is probably best remembered now) was often uptempo, rock & roll-styled and similar in sound to fellow R&B / rock & roll artists on the Specialty roster like Little Richard, Lloyd Price and Larry Williams, with a strong New Orleans-style backbeat and a rich, warm production. Her final Specialty sessions, conducted by Sonny Bono in 1959, cut down on the rock & roll influences.
Both Carr’s gospel and R&B recordings went largely unappreciated during the time they were released, but found a new audience when Specialty Records released two CDs, covering Carr’s entire output on the label and adding previously unreleased material, such as a recording with Rev. C.L. Franklin (father of Aretha Franklin) and his New Bethel Baptist Church Choir in Detroit.
Sister Wynona Carr
Dragnet For Jesus (Specialty SPCD-7016-2, 1992)
Wynona Carr
Jump Jack Jump! (Specialty SPCD-7048-2, 1993)
Nursery Rhyme Rock
Wynona Carr Lyrics
We have lyrics for these tracks by Wynona Carr:
'Til The Well Runs Dry You said you love me And then you left You broke every…
Ding Dong Daddy I wanna ding dong daddy I wanna ding dong daddy I wanna…
Finders Keepers Finders, keepers, losers, weepers I won′t weep and I won't m…
Hurt Me Ooohhhh hurt me, hurt me if you choose Come on and…
Now That I'm Free I had a man faithful and true I put him down…
Please Mr Jailer Please Mr. Jailer Won′t you let my man go free Please Mr.…
Please Mr. Jailer Please Mr. Jailer Won′t you let my man go free Please Mr.…
Should I Ever Love Again? machi eoje mannan geoscheoreom As if we saw each other yeste…
The Ball Game Life is a ball game Bein' played each day Life is a…
Til the Well Runs Dry You said you love me And then you left You broke every…
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
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@rhoda6573
That is some athletic dancing!
@andreasilva9524
Love this
@vernelledouglas1801
Many people now do these moves on the ice. Athletic and energetic!
@arizonadoowopper148
The lady defines R&B along with RnR. Fantastic music.
@morrieD
It's Whitey's Lindy Hoppers dancing in the film Hellzapoppin (1941) (check it out elsewhere on youtube). They all started at the Savoy Ballroom in the 30s, learning and creating the dance and moves to swing jazz and are here at the top of their game.
They were all the best dancers of the day, put together by promoter Herbert White, but the guy in the overalls, Frankie Manning, the main choreographer, was brought out of retirement in the 80s to lead the Lindy Hop and Swing Dance revival through the 90s and to the present day.
Thanks, Frankie Manning (dec'd 2009, aged 94!)
PS There were two white dancers in the group, Ruthie Rheingold and Harry Rosenberg, but due to laws/mores of the times they could never appear in any film or photos with the black members.
@soulsoup159
nice one dude thats some bad ass moves full ninja
@nilspn1
morrieD, Thank you very much for the very interesting, and clarifying information! 👍
@michaelpearson1272
Jazz and rock. N roll both come from rhythm blues which the film hells a popin and the lindi hop jitterbug was a rhythm blues dance jive swing zoot suits the cats that wore them where called peacocks because there gangster style suits where so bright
@asphodele3561
Hope no one have been hurt during this incredible dance.
@joelrose8514
Wow!! Now that's dancing!!