Legendary Ingramettes

Check out Ingramettes on JGM’s Best CDs

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JGM’s Best CDs, Singles and Historic Reissues of 2020

Tune in to the ‘Soul Of RVA’

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The Ingramettes on the ‘Soul of RVA’

The Legendary Ingramettes Tuesday, September 22 at 7:30pm on Shockoe Sessions Live!

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 01:32:55 +0000

The Legendary Ingramettes on Shockoe Sessions Live Tuesday, September 22 at 7:30pm on the In Your Ear Studios YouTube Channel (also on Facebook at In Your Ear Studios.) Gospel in the living room on a serious scale is going to happen on Tuesday NIght! They will be joined by our host Reese Williams plus a tiny audience in The Gallery.

Note of special interest – The Legendary Ingramettes previous show on Facebook live from back in June had over 350,000 views!!! The Ingramettes rule Europe! Don’t you want to be a part of history in the making as one of America’s top musical exports takes the stage? And yes, they are from right here in RVA!

This show is totally FREE! However, musicians need our support. All of your tip-jar proceeds go directly to the performers. A suggested donation of $10 or more is something we’d like you to consider, but your support can also come from sharing the YouTube link on social media and watching Tuesday’s concert live! Share the event and use the hashtag #shockoesessionslive in your social media postings.

All proceeds from The Legendary Ingramettes concert will go to the non-profit organization,The Institute for the Advancement of Young People.This 501(C)3, non-profit organization is based in Richmond, VA ( http://www.IAYP.org), and serves young people ages 12-25 in all the surrounding counties of Richmond, as well as the inner city. Our mission is to support the continual growth and development of the “at risk” population of young people, by making life sustaining skills available, through teaching, mentorship, and internship. We also provide services to those young people who have experienced incarceration by helping them with life goals and expectations that bring about positive behaviors that will reduce and ultimately end recidivism.

To View on Youtube Click link below

https://inyourear.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f73d29bc2ecc733064ea7d2f1&id=773167703b&e=7b657583ae

To View on FB Click link below, then click on live Video

https://www.facebook.com/inyourearstudios/

Almeta Ingram-Miller On The Ingramettes And The Power Of Gospel During Crisis

admin — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 14:24:34 +0000

https://legendaryingramettes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/20200322_wesun_almeta_ingram-miller_on_the_ingramettes_and_the_power_of_gospel_during_crisis.mp3

Gospel music has always been a source of refuge and hope, and no one knows that better than Almeta Ingram-Miller: Her mother, Maggie Ingram, was known as the Gospel Queen of Richmond, Va. In 1961, she founded one of America’s most celebrated gospel groups, Maggie Ingram and the Ingramettes, which performed together for more than five decades. The Ingramettes stopped recording after Maggie Ingram’s death in 2015.

Now, with Take A Look in the Book, Almeta Ingram-Miller is bringing back her mother’s group as The Legendary Ingramettes. The group’s new album also features a slightly updated sound, including gospel classics alongside reworkings of compositions by Bill Withers and folk pioneer Ola Belle Reed.

“That was the intent: Not just to stay true to the roots that brought us this far, but then to take it a little further so that the music would evolve as our audiences have evolved,” she says.

NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro spoke to Almeta Ingram-Miller about music and faith in chaotic times, her mother’s unintentional activism and finding inspiration outside of traditional gospel music. Listen to their conversation in the player above and read on for highlights of the interview.

Interview Highlights

On the power of faith and music in times of crisis

If you look at the history of the Ingramettes — a group created, born, raised in the pre-Civil Rights South — these are not the first difficult times that we have faced. What this does [is] it gives us a chance to use that hope and use that faith that we’ve always sang about, that we’ve always talked about. It has given us a heightened sense of the fact that we need one another in this life. I look at that as the silver lining in all of this, is that humanity’s response is that we must care for and about each other.

On her mother’s music and work during the Civil Rights era and beyond

I believe that my mom has always had a social activist conscience, even though she didn’t know that’s what it was. And here’s what I mean by that: We partnered with a church here called Mount Gilead Baptist Church back in the ’70s to go out to the prisons when the preacher would go out there to preach. We started out at Camp 13 in Powhatan, that’s here in Virginia. And we went out there and we sang and they enjoyed it so much, and as we’re getting ready to go, one of the prisoners stops my mom and he says “Ma’am, I’ve got a wife and two kids and I haven’t seen them, and they would really love to hear this music that you’re doing. Is there any way that you could bring them up here the next time you come to sing?”

To her it had nothing to do with social justice, she just felt that it wasn’t right that somebody, even though they’re incarcerated, wouldn’t be able to see their kids because the wife and kids had no way to get out there. So she rents a big van, she rents a big bus, and cooks some food to feed the children and the families and begins to take them with us to go to the prisons so they could actually see their relatives who were incarcerated. For her, it was just a matter of doing what was right, and that’s the way it was all through the Civil Rights movement.

On incorporating music outside of gospel on Take A Look in the Book

We grew up singing in rural African American churches and now, even the larger African American church venues. That was our main audience, was the African American community. But what we found out was that the music transcends race; it transcends barriers; it transcends genders. And so one of the things that I’ve enjoyed most is getting to know the bluegrass bands and the country music bands that we’ve become friends with. And so I always listened to their music. [“I’ve Endured“] is a song written by a lady by the name of Ola Belle Reed and I first heard it done by the White Top Mountain Band, with an upright bass picking and everybody clapping their hands. But I listened to the lyrics and it so paralleled my mom’s life and our lives. We’ve been influenced by the people that we’ve now met as we’ve gone on to folk festival-type venues that are not African American people. We’ve been so blessed by them.

By Sophia Alvarez Boyd at NPR Click to visit original Interview

The Legendary Ingramettes Carry Along Fiery Gospel Tradition

admin — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 14:17:10 +0000

An encounter with The Legendary Ingramettes is as intimidating as it is uplifting. Looking all that raw gospel power right in the face makes the righteous cower and the sinners run for cover. But they all come back, drawn by the power and the glory this Richmond, Virginia-based female gospel trio bring to their performances.

At the Richmond Folk Festival several years ago, there were only a handful of people in the sweltering tent on a hot summer day when they started their show. But by the time they got through their first song, the tent was packed to capacity, people of all colors standing shoulder to shoulder gazing transfixed at the celestial outpouring of gospel goodness. Mother Maggie was still around back then, and although she had to be helped to stand, once she got upright she was blasting away at both righteous and sinners with a ferocity and zeal that stunned onlookers and made instant Ingramette-wannabes of anyone within the sound of her magnificent voice. By the time they played the National Folk Festival in Greensboro in 2015, she had passed, but her legacy was well represented by daughter Almeta Ingram-Miller and family members Cheryl Marcia Yancey and Carrie Ann Jackson.

What the group puts out onstage is fiery, Southern-fried jubilee gospel, served with deep-dish soul. Ingram-Miller revealed part of the recipe in that Folk Festival appearance, telling the crowd that while listening to the music of the Dixie Hummingbirds and Sam Cooke as children, “We caught a-hold of the message in the music and put a little mustard and relish on it.” There’s plenty of hot sauce in there too, but of the heavenly variety, not the devilish brand.

On Take a Look in the Book, that spicy seasoning jumps out at you in “When Jesus Comes,” Ingram-Miller heading up a celestial cheerleading squad for Team Jesus that steams with holy funk courtesy of Calvin “Kool-Aid” Curry’s heavenly bassline. Ingram-Miller whoops it up on “Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand,” a tonsil-straining testimony to shaking hands with the Big Guy and not letting go. And if there’s any doubt about where this material came from, the title cut clears it up.

But on this first recorded outing without Mama Maggie, daughter Ingram-Miller takes it across the aisle a half-step with Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands,” a tune the singer-songwriter often introduced in his shows as one of his favorite compositions. But while Withers’ original was a folky, soulful blues treatment, the Ingramettes take it to church, wooing celestially behind Ingram-Miller’s wailing sermonette on the sanctified safety net of Grandma’s hands, working in some extra lyrics about Grandma’s cotton pickin’ days, a reference to her own grandmother’s background, plucking cotton till her fingers bled.

Ingram-Miller brings more folk into the church with her rendition of Ola Belle and David Reed’s “I’ve Endured,” taking the banjo-driven Appalachian original and transforming it into a churchy testimonial to overcoming hardship by hard work and faith.

It’s soul-stirring, life-changing music with a message that crosses the aisle to bring a smile to your face and put joy in even the most curmudgeonly heart.

From: Grant Britt of No Depression Click Here to Visit Original Post

The Legendary Ingramettes reaching listeners with new album, enduring faith

admin — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 14:14:14 +0000

Last year, the Legendary Ingramettes played in Serbia and Bulgaria. Neither country might mark the sort of spot a young musician dreams of playing, but the Ingramettes have their own story to tell, and winding up in Serbia turned out to be not just the pinnacle of a long career, but the spiritual completion of a decades-long hope.

Almeta Ingram-Miller leads the Richmond-based gospel group, but you have to go back a generation to get its start. The group in one form or another has been singing for 64 years now, starting in pre-Civil Rights Florida and Georgia and continuing today.

Ingram-Miller’s mother, Maggie Ingram, started the group all those years ago, in large part to support her family after her husband had left. Ingram and the kids sang, and they set out on a journey that would take them out of their home, connect them to the Civil Rights Movement, and spread their faith.

In line with that work, Ingram-Miller became an ordained Baptist minister in 2003.

“The call to a preaching-of-the-gospel ministry, for me, is an extension of the singing ministry that we began,” she explained. “It was a clear call where God says, ‘You know what? I love what you’re doing with the singing, but you’ve gotta do more.’

That ministry of preaching and singing goes outside both the church and the concert halls. The Ingramettes currently have relationships with the Virginia Correctional Center for Women in Goochland and the Riverside Regional Jail in Prince George County. The group initially began going simply to sing at the minimum-security camps, but soon began helping arrange visits between the inmates and their families by providing rides out to the institutions.

“All of these things have grown out of my mom’s initial investment in the singing ministry,” Ingram-Miller said. “It’s all grown out of the fact that you just need to do the right thing.”

Even before Maggie Ingram’s passing in 2015, the transition to a new era was beginning as she passed the baton on to Ingram-Miller, who references the story of Elijah and Elisha and the double portion from 2 Kings. She thinks of Elisha’s need to cross the same water his predecessor did, but he knows what works, and that’s what Ingram-Miller has done in continuing her mom’s music.

That Legendary Ingramettes sound comes from a very particular place, and not just “gospel” in general. They’ve built a sound on a traditional male quartet structure, like that used by the Dixie Hummingbirds (an act they “grew up listening to and singing on stage with”). Ingram-Miller explains how putting the tenor on top in a quartet allows “the tones that come out [to be] a little more intense … they pack a little more punch than in choral singing.”

The current lineup hasn’t gotten far from those roots, and it’s one of the few groups left singing that way. Ingram-Miller said the group is “very versatile,” but it hasn’t made the “change to the urban contemporary gospel style.”

“The best of us comes through in the quartet singing,” she explained.

And the best of the Legendary Ingramettes is something special. The new album, “Take a Look in the Book,” was produced as part of the Virginia Folklife Program; the singers also recorded a live album together in 2011. Program director Jon Lohman explained that creating this album was “a great honor and pleasure,” and he added that Ingram-Miller’s “voice is incomparable, and I’d say she’s my favorite singer.”

The album includes original compositions, traditional songs, and pieces by Ola Belle Reed and Bill Withers — all done in a big, potent style. The Withers cut, “Grandma’s Hands,” includes additional lyrics to personalize it, bringing in Ingram-Miller’s own grandmother’s life picking cotton.

“Anyone can sing someone else’s song,” she said, “but it’s more important that you share some of yourself. Every song might not reach every person, but it is our prayer that you’re just a little better, you feel a little lighter, because you heard an encouraging word, even in the midst of struggles. My pastor always says, ‘You cannot climb high on a smooth mountain.’ You need crevices.”

Ingram-Miller would know. She remembers a time when her mom wanted to vote for John F. Kennedy, but couldn’t afford the poll tax, so she came home and cried. She remembers the hard work just so they could go to school; she still doesn’t like butterbeans because she had to shell so many of them. And she certainly remembers the time she couldn’t go out to play because they were waiting for some deacons to come cut down the man who had been lynched in their yard.

But in those times, her Grandma would lay her hands on their heads in blessing.

“That’s what a blessing really is,” Ingram-Miller says. “To speak into someone’s life.”

She carries a sense of blessing with her in her art and in her life. While she can look back on something like the lynching or the poverty, she’s more excited to bring up positive stories, like the time an unlikely white man protected and helped her family at his “whites-only” service station as the family traveled from Florida to Richmond. Remembering those experiences “puts a smile on your face.”

“It keeps hope within you, and hope does not disappoint,” she said.

The music, the service, the ministry: it adds up to important work for the artists, looking both forward and backward.

“You have to keep telling your story,” Ingram-Miller said. “We’re keeping that alive, but we’re also keeping that hope alive. There are people in this world who do care about other people.”

Some of that hope comes from her mother’s story.

“She could do all that with a third-grade education,” Ingram-Miller mused. “But when she passed away, she had been given an honorary doctorate. … How can that figure in the mind of a 16-year-old girl who gets married to a sharecropper?”

And “all that” brings the story back to Serbia and Bulgaria. When Maggie Ingram left Florida at the call of God, she had Genesis 12 in mind, when God tells Abram that if he leaves his land, then, through him, God will bless people all over the world. That’s what Ingram held on to. She never left the country, but her daughter did, and she was “overwhelmed,” even when changing planes in Vienna before reaching Serbia. She was thinking of an ancient promise, held onto for 60 years and now fulfilled.

“These aren’t things that it takes billions of dollars to do,” said Ingram-Miller. “It just takes a heart that says, ‘Here am I. I’ll do that.’”

From: Justin Cober-Lake Daily Progress

After a life of service, local gospel icon Maggie Ingram’s legacy remains.

admin — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 14:08:18 +0000

Richmond’s gospel queen, Maggie Ingram, has boarded the “heaven-bound train to glory” in the words of her daughter, Rev. Almeta Ingram-Miller.

The 84-year-old matriarch of the Ingramettes group for six decades, Ingram died at home surrounded by family and friends on June 23. She had suffered from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease in recent years.

The Ingramettes had just returned from Milton, Delaware the Saturday before she died. “Mother was unable to travel with us, but she gave us her blessings and we had a great service,” says Ingram-Miller, lead singer for the generational group which also features an Ingram granddaughter.

Recently, Ingram’s pace and singing had slowed a bit causing concern for her health. During a recent concert where the Ingramettes performed without her, Ingram-Miller remarked, “This is only the second concert we have ever done without momma.”

An ordained minister, “Mother Maggie” Ingram was a gospel icon and beloved performer whose music was characterized by a high energy and traditional sound that always brought the crowd to its feet with contagious hand clapping and foot-stomping beats. An annual closing highlight at the Richmond Folk Fest, she also played esteemed venues such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as well as conducting seminars at various colleges.

She was a role model to many, revered as much for her impassioned performances as for her commitment to her family, church and her fellow human beings. In the 1970s, Ingram formed a prison ministry, later partnering with the Mount Gilead Baptist Church to minister through song to prisoners at the Richmond jail. She also ran a daycare service at one time and delivered food to the needy.

Style Weekly most recently wrote about Ingram in February, when she and her family packed the VMFA for a free evening concert in celebration of black history month. As her daughter predicted at the time, it would be one of her final performances. She spoke then about the legacy her evangelist mother had passed down.

“Her life has been one of service. We’ve seen her literally give her life away to humanity, open the doors of her home,” Ingram-Miller said. “It does not matter what your situation is. There is hope if you’re still here. God has something for you to do.”

In 2009, Ingram received the Virginia Heritage Award for a lifetime of excellence in the folk and traditional arts. And she kept singing right until the end.

“Alzheimer’s had really taken hold but when she got onstage, still to her last day, it was incredible. Somehow the music would still flow through her,” says the state folklorist of Virginia, Jon Lohman. “You just have to step back and rejoice that she lived in this world.”

Ingram was born July 4, 1930, on Mulholland’s Plantation in Coffee County, Georgia. She worked in the cotton and tobacco fields with her parents while growing up. Early on in her music career, while performing with the Six Trumpets, she was asked by the godfather of soul, James Brown, to sing back-up but passed on secular music. She moved to Richmond in December 1961 because her second eldest son suffered from rheumatic heart disease. Here, she worked in the home of legendary civil rights attorney Oliver W. Hill Sr.

For anyone seeking her recorded music: Barksdale “Barky” Haggins, owner and founder of Barky’s and Belle Spiritual Store, has been buying records directly from the Ingram family for years. One older record “Richmond Flood” is often in demand and they occasionally have it on cassette. The vinyl shop, Steady Sounds, most frequently carries her albums “A Tribute to Granny” and “God Works a Miracle,” according to co-owner Marty Key. Also there’s the recent “Maggie Ingram and the Ingramettes: Live in Richmond” CD available at fine local record stores.

The good news for fans: The Ingramettes plan to continue singing because “that’s what God told us to do, and that’s what Mom would have wanted us to do,” says Ingram-Miller.

Services for Maggie Ingram will be held Thursday, July 2 at 11 a.m. at St. Paul’s Baptist Church at 4247 Creighton Road. Arrangements are being handled by the Wilson and Associates Funeral Home.

From Style Weekly by Brent Baldwin