The Betty Wright Story

The city of Miami is a musical mecca known as the birthplace of multiple hitmakers. The southern bass of Luke and 2 Live Crew makes you wanna Move Sumthin'; Gloria Estefan's Miami Sound Machine had the world Doin' That Conga; and K.C. & the Sunshine Band had everybody Shakin Their Booties.  In many ways, it all began when a 14-year-old girl from the Liberty City housing projects put the “Magic City’s” own brand of southern soul on the international map. 

Betty Wright (born Bessie Regina Norris) is known to the world-at-large for her soul-stirring iconic rhythm & blues hits like “Clean Up Woman”, “Tonight Is the Night”, and “No Pain No Gain”. However, there is much, much more to the life and legacy of Betty Wright. Truth be told, there are very few aspects of the arts and entertainment industry that Wright left untouched during her 60+ years on earth. The GRAMMY winner was a highly influential singer-songwriter as well as a celebrated background vocalist and accomplished producer who solidified her position in music history when she became the first female artist to release a certified gold album on her own record label. Her work as a vocal coach and mentor has influenced generations of cross-genre artists from the Jonas Brothers and Destiny’s Child to Joss Stone and Skip Marley. She was also one of the first pop vocalists to sing in the stratospheric “whistle register,” a technique also used by Minnie Riperton, Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande.

Bessie Regina Norris was born on Dec. 21, 1953, in Miami, the seventh (and youngest) child of Rosa Lee Akins Wright, a registered nurse who was a devout member of the Pentecostal church. Her father, McArthur Norris, worked in lawn service. Rosa Wright taught her children to sing gospel music, backed them on guitar and wrote a song, “I’ll Keep Toiling On,” which they released under the name Echoes of Joy. Betty “was not even 3 years young yet, but she could sing with a strong, loud, and clear voice on key,” her older brother Phillip later wrote.

 

She made a transition to secular music despite the objections of her mother, who once told James Brown he couldn’t hire her children because “they only sing gospel music.” Betty scored her first record deal at 11 years old when local producers heard her singing “Summertime” at a neighborhood record store.  At age 14, she cracked national charts for the first time with the now-classic “Girls Can’t Do What the Guys Do”, which peaked at No. 33 on the Billboard Hot 100. A year later, Betty’s debut album, My First Time Around, garnered the young teen an invitation to appear on “American Bandstand”. However, the high school junior had to decline because the principal at her all-girls school wouldn’t let her take a day off.

 

Even as a teenager, Betty started branching out into other roles. She helped the local singers George and Gwen McRae sign to Alston Records where went on to score Top 10 hits. Enrolling at Miami Dade College, she picked percussion as her major, which influenced her aggressively rhythmic singing.

Wright fully broke into the mainstream in the '70s. She returned to the charts in 1972 with her classic "Clean Up Woman," a single off her second album, I Love The Way You Love, which was released that same year. In addition to becoming her highest-charting Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 (peaking at No. 6), the song notched Wright her first-ever GRAMMY nomination (Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female) at the 15th GRAMMY Awards as well as her first Gold record, presented on her 18th birthday. "Clean Up Woman" has since been regularly sampled, with everyone from Chance the Rapper, Mary J. Blige, and Sublime borrowing the song's widely recognized, feel-good guitar riff. 

 

Betty’s star continued to rise throughout the '70s. "Tonight is the Night", from her first live album, has gone on to become a quiet storm classic. The “story of a young girl making love for the very first time” showcased Wright’s power as a storyteller and established a sisterhood with millions of other young women that not only lasted the rest of her life but endures to this day. Her 1975 song, "Where Is The Love," earned Wright her first and only career GRAMMY win, for Best Rhythm & Blues Song, at the 18th GRAMMY Awards, held in 1976. In 1977, Wright discovered musician Peter Brown and sang background on Brown's hits "You Should Do It" and "Dance with Me" (where her vocals were prominently featured alongside Brown's) from the successful LP A Fantasy Love Affair. In 1978, she performed a duet with Alice Cooper (the original shock rocker) on the song "No Tricks". Betty closed out the seventies as the opening act for Bob Marley on the reggae/pop culture icon’s Survival tour.

Wright remained active in the '80s. Her 1981 self-titled album featured "What Are You Going To Do With It," a minor hit composed by Stevie Wonder.  The year before, she (along with Michael Jackson and Eddie Levert of the O’Jays) background vocals on Wonder’s platinum album Hotter Than July. In 1982, Betty’s guest appearance on Richard "Dimples" Fields' Dimples hit "She's Got Papers on Me" firmly stole the show. In 1983, she released the album Wright Back at You, which featured compositions and production by Marlon Jackson of the Jacksons.

 

In 1985, after yet major record company relationship ended in frustration, Betty made the game-changing decision to form her own independent label, Ms B Records. The label’s debut album, Sevens, featured the hit single “Pain”.  Two years later, Wright made history as the first female artist to score a gold album on her own label, when her 1987 album, Mother Wit achieved that certification within just 12 months of its release. The album was notable for the hit sequels “After the Pain” and "No Pain, No Gain," which returned her to the R&B Top 20 charts for the first time in a decade. 

 

Betty Wright is one of the few entertainers of any genre that has been relevant to the music business for every decade of the last 60 years. She began the nineties with her first Top Twenty Adult Contemporary placement when Grayson Hugh tapped her to duet with him on a remake of “How Bout Us” for the True Love film soundtrack, and the single peaked at No.15. A couple of years later, her successful litigation against pop group Color Me Bad for their illegal sampling of “Tonight Is the Night” set legal precedent for similar cases. Legal samples from the song have become a staple in the world of hip hop appearing on records by Tupac, Li’l Wayne, and others. As the new millennium took shape Betty Wright was introduced to the MTV generation as the go-to vocal coach for Diddy’s first two incarnations of Making the Band.

 

Wright would gain a new wave of younger followers and fans through her collaborations with next-gen artists and producers in the 2000s. Her production work on Joss Stone's first two albums earned her high accolades: 2003's The Soul Sessions was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in the U.K., according to Billboard, while 2004's Mind Body & Soul garnered Wright a GRAMMY nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album (as a producer along with Steve Greenberg and Mike Mangini). Her collaborations with Angie Stone (“Baby”) and Lil Wayne earned her back to back GRAMMY nods in 2007.

 

In 2011, she released Betty Wright: The Movie, a collaborative album with The Roots, which featured collaborations with Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne and Joss Stone, among others. "Surrender," a featured track off the album, garnered Wright her sixth and final artist GRAMMY nomination, for Best Traditional R&B Performance, at the 54th GRAMMY Awards, held in 2012.  Wright spent much of the next few years mentoring a new generation of artists, producers and writers in a workshop program she dubbed the M.O.S.T. (an acronym for Mountains of Songs Together). She also teamed up once again with Greenberg and Mangini to produce The O’Jays first studio album in 15 years, The Last Word. In 2016, she joined hip hop superstar DJ Khaled alongside rappers Kendrick Lamar and Big Sean on the title track of his hit album Holy Key.  Their performance of the track during the BET Hip Hop awards was a showstopper, and Betty’s signature high note went viral on social media platforms. 

In addition to her artistic contributions, Betty Wright was an active member of the Recording Academy. As a Board member of the Florida chapter, she worked in the fields of education, advocacy and diversity. As an active participant in the Recording Academy's Advocacy arm, she was instrumental in securing the organization's support from local representatives such as Congresswoman Frederica Wilson.

 

She participated in numerous GRAMMY U and GRAMMY Museum panels and events, including a performance at a 2018 civil rights commemoration event in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

As a champion for the inclusion of R&B and hip-hop, she launched the Florida Chapter Urban Task Force, which brought together top industry figures like Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, DJ Khaled, Uncle Luke and Fat Joe.

 

As passionate as Betty Wright was about her art and her community, both took a backseat to the role she loved most- mother to her five children (Namphuyo, Patrice, Patrick, Chaka, and Asher). In the liner notes of her 1994 album B-Attitudes, Betty dedicated the album to her children, proclaiming them the “loves of her life”.  Her daughters often joined her on tour to provide backing vocals.

On Sunday, May 10, 2020 after battling cancer, Betty Wright passed away at home surrounded by her children. In 2022, her daughters Namphuyo, Patrice, and Asher established Betty Wright Legacy Entertainment, LLC. to manage their mother’s massive catalog of musical recordings, compositions, and art work.

THE PHOTO ALBUMS

View Betty's galleries

View more