Zella Jackson Price

Education

Price graduated from Sumner High School of Saint Louis in 1957 and began her own career.

Career

She performed with many Saint Louis-based entertainers and earned national recognition, performing in her own show at Carnegie Hall in 1985. She was one of the pioneer black announcers on Saint Louis radio and was the feature of a documentary about her life created by Chicago television channel 28. She sang in several movies, including Say Amen, Somebody (1982), a documentary about Ethel Waters" life, and the Home Box Office mini-series Angels in America.

In 2015, Price made headlines when a daughter she had given birth to in 1965 and was told had died made contact with the family through social media.

deoxyribonucleic acid evidence confirmed the relationship and an investigation into how the separation occurred is on-going. Price"s music career began at the age of six, singing gospel music and playing piano accompaniment for her mother, Alberta (née Waterford) Cooper, who sang with the Waterford Sisters and Willie Mae Ford Smith.

By 1967, she had already made recordings and was touring Missouri singing gospel songs, having recorded with artists such as Oliver Sain Skeet Rogers, Denise Thimes and other artists. Price was a pioneer of gospel radio, hosting a show on KIRL, and along with other black announcers including Columbus Gregory, Wynetta Lindsey, Steve Love, Leonard Morris, Dean Strong and Ruby Summerville-Dickson "played a significant role in the development of Saint Louis black radio." She later starred in a television special on Chicago"s television channel 28, which documented her life and work.

Price was a featured singer in the music documentary Say Amen, Somebody.

The 1982 documentary also features The Barrett Sisters, Thomas A. Dorsey, Willie Mae Ford Smith, Sallie Martin and The O"Neal Twins. Her performance was praised by Chicago Sun-Times, Cosmopolitan Magazine and Rolling Stone. One of the crowning moments of Price"s life was when she performed in 1985 at Carnegie Hall in New York City, with her long-time accompanist Michael Johnson.

Another, was a 2009 performance for Black History Month at Powell Hall with the Saint Louis Symphony to honor blues legend Mae Wheeler.

Achievements

• She was selected to play Ethel Waters in a film of Waters" life, and she sang "Happy I"m His Child", written by Malcolm Speed in the Academy Award-nominated Home Box Office mini-series Angels in America, which starred First Rate (at Lloyd's) Pacino and Meryl Streep.