La Cille Watkins' All City Chorus
(Watkins & Bell Arrangement)
Cecil Records
314 Norfolk Street, Newark, N.J.
1954
Also issued on Jaguar #202
Billboard ad, April 24, 1954
Born in Newark (New Jersey) in 1923, La Cille Christine Watkins started her musical career as a gospel and opera singer. In 1954, according to Jet Magazine, she became a night club entertainer. She was singing the blues in five different languages. (Jet April 1, 1954).
Her long time partner in songwriting and music was Wilbur Bell (her husband?) who also recorded as Johnny Bell (Cecil and Fleetwood Records).
Toegether, they recorded spirituals as by the Watkins-Bell Singers for Bandwagon Records (and Arlington, its folk and race subisidary) in the late forties. LaCille Watkins had also at least two releases under her own name. The first on Jaguar Records backed by the Volumes. The second on Kapp, backed by the Belltones.
Songs they penned together have been recorded, among others, by Marie Knight (" Up In My Heavenly Home", Decca, 1949), Earl Connelly King : "Nothin' ", King 5038 (57), Annie Laurie : Please, Honey, Don't Go (Deluxe 6135), Kenny And Moe (The Blues Boys) : Yes I Will (Deluxe 6139) and John Lester And Mellow-Queens : "Getting Nearer " (C&M, 1959)
La Cille Watkins & the Belltones
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