Rest in peace to Vesta Williams, who was 47 when she was found in a hotel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is still unknown.
Vesta was the Original Wedding Crasher. I loved this song, she had a wonderful voice. And believe it or not, my friends mother has the Jet Magazine with Vesta on the cover after her huge weight loss on her table! Its from the early 90′s…
From Wikipedia: The daughter of a disc jockey, Williams became very interested in singing while in high school. Her family moved from Ohio to Los Angeles in the 1960s. Williams and her sisters once appeared on the television show Jack and Jill as The Williams Sisters. She returned to Ohio in 1977 and sang in the girl group Wild Honey (with bandmate Freddi Poole), but soon decided to go back to Los Angeles to launch a solo career. Former Fifth Dimension member Ron Townson put Williams in his band Wild Honey. After that stint, she found work as a session musician, working with artists such as Chaka Khan (to whom she has been vocally compared on occasion), Gladys Knight, Stephanie Mills, and Gordon Lightfoot. Williams sang on the original version of Joe Sample’s “The Survivor”, and met producer David Crawford while working with his group Klique. After doing much session work, she scored a record deal with A&M Records which released her debut album Vesta in 1986. The album became a modest seller on the R&B Album Chart and it featured her first Top 10 R&B hit “Once Bitten, Twice Shy”.
Her 1988 sophomore release, Vesta 4 U, produced the Top 10 R&B hits “Sweet Sweet Love”, “4 U”, and “Congratulations”, with the latter peaking at #55 on the main Hot 100 chart, her only single to crack that chart. This would also be her most successful album and her only album to appear on the US Billboard Top 200 Album Chart, peaking at #131. In 1991, Williams released her third album entitled Special and the title track as a single. That single became her highest charting song on the R&B singles chart at #2, but sales of the album were less than that of Vesta 4 U. Her next album, 1993′s Everything-N-More, produced only the minor R&B hit “Always”.
In 1989, Polygram Records had purchased A&M Records. Williams 1998 album Relationships was released under the Polygram name, and it became a modest seller on the R&B Charts. After this album, A&M/Polygram Records would part ways with her. She continued to be a popular session singer, landing spots on albums by such artists as Phil Perry, Howard Hewett, and George Duke.
In 2000, Polygram released a compilation album featuring songs from Williams and CeCe Peniston, another Polygram artist.
In 2007, Williams released an album of R&B songs on Shanachie Records entitled Distant Lover. Produced by Chris “Big Dog” Davis, it features songs originally recorded by Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Sade, and Deniece Williams.
Williams portrayed a saloon singer in the 1993 film Posse, directed by Mario Van Peebles. She also had a hit with the SWV song “Rain” with smooth jazz musician Norman Brown.
