Rita Coolidge

And this big hit by Boz Scaggs

She and Cher bore a slight resemblance. A natural beauty...until Cher went cray cray with the plastic surgery.

Her best role was playing herself as a presenter at the Grammy Awards in A Star is Born.

Rita always sang like she'd just taken a couple of valiums

She was married to sexy Kris Kristofferson.

I read her autobiography a couple years ago. It was a decent & quick read with a few interesting tidbits: Kristofferson quit drinking cold turkey after he saw the final cut of A Star Is Born and realized he was essentially playing himself & destined to become a self parody (by this point, he had also hit Rita a couple of times when he was raging drunk, which was the last straw for her).

She wrote the famous coda of Eric Clapton's "Layla." It appears in a song called "Time" recorded by her sister Priscilla and Priscilla's then husband, Booker T. Jones (of Booker T. & the MG's.). At the time she wrote it, she was dating legendary session musician drummer Jim Gordon (who later succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia and murdered his mother with a hammer). Gordon flat out stole the piece and presented it to Clapton as his own. Coolidge said she refrained from suing because the royalties from "Layla" helped support Gordon's daughter, who was just a little girl when her father killed her grandmother. Pretty big of Rita.

She was like the female Perry Como. I always imagined her lying on the stage face down as she sang.

Rita's contribution to the James Bond franchise. Allegedly, Cubby Broccoli's wife kept playing Rita's albums to persuade him to use her for a Bond song. John Barry wrote the music and Tim Rice the lyrics; r6 can correct me if I'm wrong, but I've also heard that Rita is not a fan of the song, as it kept being re-written during recording and she felt it was never "finished." Although it barely made it into the top 40 of the Hot 100, it went to #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart for 4 weeks.

She really sucked.

I always enjoyed this album. It has a beautiful rendition of Christine McVie's "Songbird". She definitely has the valium, laid back effect referenced by R4, but that's what made her easy to listen to.

Love Love Love her!

At the time Rita Coolidge, Roberta Flack, Phoebe Snow, and Carly Simon were my favorite women balladeers.

Man I used to love to pick her up like a bowling ball.

Tramp destroyed Crosby,Stills and Nash.An Barbara Streisands relationship with Kris Kristopherson....

I do like the song "Layla".....

would listen to her, Ricky Lee Nicolette Larson all the time....usually stoned and unable to move

She’s liked more than Jennifer Warnes.

Didn’t Bette Midler once comment that Rita Coolidge had been arrested for loitering in front of a microphone?

She was an unusual choice to sing a James Bond theme. I remember reading when “Octopussy” was in production that Laura Branigan was being considered to sing the theme for the upcoming Bond film. That made more sense, because not only had she been on the charts more recently than Coolidge, but her style was more in keeping with the Bond theme tradition.

She sing like Karen Carpenter on Quaaludes. Not a fan.

She was the epitome of bland.

She was before my time, and listening to the links here, she did sound like she was on tranquilizers. She must've been one of those "only in the 70s" stars. There were quite a few of them who only could've been stars in that decade.

Catherine O’Hara captured her electrifying style!

[quote]Didn’t Bette Midler once comment that Rita Coolidge had been arrested for loitering in front of a microphone?

Loitering in front of an orchestra. And it was about "Miss Karen."

[quote]Catherine O’Hara captured her electrifying style!

That's not O'Hara.

Rita is 75 now and still kickin' around.

This is my favorite photo of Rita. She is of Native American Cherokee ancestry.