[msb-alumni] Bonnie Pointer, Who Gave Sisters' Songs 'That Magic Note,' Dies at 69 on June 8, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 20:23:59 -0400
BlankBonnie Pointer, Who Gave Sisters' Songs 'That Magic Note,' Dies at 69. By
Ben
Sisario.
She started the Pointer Sisters with her siblings but left them to pursue a
solo
career before they went on to score hit after hit in the 1980s.
Bonnie Pointer, who was one of the founding siblings of the Pointer Sisters,
the
vocal group that built an eclectic career in the 1970s mixing funk, retro jazz
and
country, but who left the band before its pop reinvention in the 1980s, died on
Monday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 69. The cause was cardiac arrest,
her
sister Anita Pointer said.
In their first phase, starting in the early 1970s, the Pointer Sisters were a
foursome with a dynamic, genre-crossing style. They sang in crisp, close
harmonies
and dabbled in scat vocals, and they wore 1940s fashions with a sense of
thrift-store
chic. Admiring critics called them a mix between the Andrews Sisters and the
Supremes.
The sisters, who grew up in Oakland, Calif., honed their vocal skills as
children at
the West Oakland Church of God, where their father was the pastor. Bonnie and
June,
the two youngest sisters, began performing in 1969 under the name The Pointers
-- A
Pair.
In a phone interview, Anita Pointer said she quit her job as a legal secretary
after
seeing Bonnie and June onstage in San Francisco.
"I saw them at the Fillmore West, and I lost my mind," she said, adding that
Bonnie
was "the catalyst' in starting their musical career."
Renamed the Pointer Sisters, the three began working as backup singers.
Mingling with
the San Francisco-area rock scene, they sang with acts like Boz Scaggs, Grace
Slick
and the gender-bending pioneer Sylvester, and they were briefly signed to
Atlantic
Records. Their singles for that label failed to chart, although one 1972
B-side,
"Send Him Back," has come to be considered a minor funk classic.
Joined by their sister Ruth, the group, now a quartet, signed with the
progressive
label Blue Thumb, where they thrived. Their debut album, called simply "The
Pointer
Sisters" (1973), featured a musky take on Allen Toussaint's unity anthem "Yes
We Can
Can" as well as a rapid-fire version of "Cloudburst," a staple of the jazz
vocal
group Lambert, Hendricks & Ross's repertoire. "Yes We Can Can" went to No. 11
on the
Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
Bonnie Pointer distinguished herself as a songwriter as well. "Fairytale,"
written by
Bonnie and Anita for the group's 1974 album, "That's a Plenty," was a
melancholy
country breakup ballad that brought the group the first of its three Grammy
Awards,
for best country performance by a duo or group. Bonnie was also one of the
credited
writers for "How Long (Betcha' Got a Chick on the Side)," from 1975, one of the
Pointer Sisters' best-loved funk tracks, which was later sampled by the female
rap
group Salt-N-Pepa.
She left the group in the late 1970s and signed with Motown; she also married
Jeffrey
Bowen, a producer there. Her two albums for that label were heavy with disco
remakes
of 1960s Motown singles, like the Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie
Honey
Bunch)," with Ms. Pointer recording most of the vocal parts herself. The most
successful in this formula was "Heaven Must Have Sent You," which went to No.
11 in
1979.
"I'm the kind of person who likes to do adventurous, new things," Ms. Pointer
told
Blues & Soul magazine in 1979. "It's got to be a challenge for me to go
forward,
'cause I don't like to be stuck into just one thing."
By that time, the Pointer Sisters had begun to reinvent themselves as a trio,
with a
closer focus on the pop and rock mainstream.
Their version of Bruce Springsteen's "Fire" went to No. 2 in early 1979, and
for the
first half of the 1980s the group was a phenomenon. "He's So Shy" (1980), "Jump
(For
My Love)" (1984), "I'm So Excited" (1984) and "Neutron Dance" (1985) were
ubiquitous
hits that presented the group as sassy, earthy dance-pop queens who had seen it
all.
In 1985, the Pointer Sisters won two more Grammys: best pop performance by a
duo or
group, for 'Jump,' and best vocal arrangement, for "Automatic."
Patricia Eva Pointer was born in Oakland on July 11, 1950, to Elton and Sarah
(Salis)
Pointer. Her mother was also a minister. A family friend called the girl Bunny;
Bonnie herself adjusted that to create her own nickname, Anita said. Besides
Anita,
she is survived by her sister Ruth and her brothers Aaron and Fritz Pointer.
Her
marriage to Mr. Bowen ended in divorce. June Pointer died of cancer in 2006 at
52.
Bonnie Pointer released two more albums after leaving Motown -- "If the Price
Is
Right" (1984) and "Like a Picasso" (2011) -- but never found the same success
she had
enjoyed in the Pointer Sisters.
In 2011, she was arrested on charges of possession of crack cocaine. But Anita
said
they had remained close, and this year she and Bonnie released "Feels Like
June" in
tribute to their sister.
Bonnie's voice in the original group's four-part harmonies, Anita said, was
essential
but hard to pinpoint. "Bonnie was that magic note," Anita Pointer said, "that
no one
could ever find."
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