Alfa Anderson, the singer behind hits including “Le Freak” and “Good Times,” has died. She was 78.
The death was confirmed by Ms. Anderson’s publicist, Tonya Hawley, who did not cite a cause or say when or where she died.
Ms. Anderson’s voice became a constant presence in the disco era from her work with the band Chic and other prominent artists, including Sister Sledge, Diana Ross and Mick Jagger.
Her musical career blossomed after she moved from Augusta, Ga., to New York, where she studied education and became a teacher, marking up homework and leading classes while performing with bands around the city.
She was eventually introduced to Luther Vandross, who invited her to a Chic vocal session, shortly after the disco band was formed by the guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards. Ms. Anderson sang as a background vocalist on Chic’s debut album, before becoming a co-lead vocalist with Luci Martin from 1978 to 1983.
Her voice can be heard on some of the band’s best-known hits, including “Good Times.” She sang solo on “At Last I Am Free,” and “I Want Your Love.”
In 2013, she told Pop Matters that “I Want Your Love” was still a song she enjoyed decades later.
“It made me feel like I was really an integral part of the group, not just a background singer,” she said. “It actually forced me to throw off my Southern Baptist roots and not be so shy about expressing my sensuality or sexuality.”
She also sang lead with session vocalist, Diva Gray, on “Le Freak,” which the Library of Congress added to its National Recording Registry in 2017, celebrating the disco track as “completely evocative of an era but also undeniably timeless.”
Alfa Karlys Anderson was born the eldest of four children on Sept. 7, 1946, in Augusta, Ga., according to a 2007 profile in The Augusta Chronicle. Her father, Alfonso Anderson, worked for the U.S. Postal Service, and her mother, Essie Anderson, was a social worker.
“My earliest memories are of singing at home with my family, at school and at our church,” Ms. Anderson told The New York Daily News in 2004. “I sang for the pure joy. Until I moved to New York, I never knew you could make money singing.”
After Ms. Anderson graduated from Lucy C. Laney High School, where she played saxophone, flute and piccolo, she earned a degree from Paine College in Augusta. She moved to New York and earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Teachers College. She sang in the choir at both colleges.
While singing professionally in New York in the 1970s, including recorded background vocal work for several artists and on the soundtrack to “The Wiz,” she started teaching. She told Pop Matters that she worked at Hunter College until Chic went on its first tour.
After Chic disbanded, she joined Mr. Vandross’s touring band from 1982 through 1987, a gig that introduced her to her husband, Eluriel “Tinkr” Barfield, who was a bass player in Mr. Vandross’s touring band.
They married, she became a mother to his two sons, and she went back to school to get a second master’s degree, in educational leadership, from Bank Street College of Education in New York, Pop Matters reported.
She returned to her education career and continued to perform and make music on her own, as well with other artists, including her husband, and two other former Chic vocalists, Norma Jean Wright and Luci Martin. In 2017, she released her first solo full length album, “Music From My Heart,” which included a tribute to Mr. Vandross, “When Luther Sings.”
Ms. Anderson spoke to Pop Matters in 2018 about the influence of disco, which she said was “intergenerational and multicultural,” and could be enjoyed by anyone, no matter their background.
“Disco was always a place where people could get away from society’s restrictions,” she said. “The world puts you in a box, but when you’re on the floor dancing, and you grab somebody’s hand, it doesn’t matter whose hand it is. That’s what disco gave to the world.”
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