Della Reese

With a startlingly long career that encompassed jazz, pop, film, and television, Della Reese was a multi-media phenomenon. And as an African-American artist working before and during the civil rights era, her achievements were doubly significant. Delloreese Patricia Early was born on July 6, 1931 in Detroit, Michigan to a black father and Cherokee mother. She started out in gospel music, singing with Mahalia Jackson when she was just 13 years old, and subsequently with The Meditation Singers in the late '40s.

By the early '50s, Reese had made the shift towards a jazz/pop style, and in 1954 she released her first solo single, "Yes Indeed." She plugged away for the next few years, releasing several singles on the Jubilee label, and in 1957 she had her big breakthrough with the song "And That Reminds Me," which became a huge success and earned her national attention for her big, lustrous vocal style. Two years later she made a move to RCA, and scored her biggest success ever with "Don't You Know?" that same year, hitting No. 2 Pop and No. 1 R&B and earning Reese a Grammy nomination.

Her 1960 LP Della hit big too, and gave her another Grammy nomination. By the late '60s, though she continued to record, Reese began to develop her career as an actor. She started out with one-off appearances on TV shows like "The Mod Squad" (ABC 1968-73) and then TV movies. In the mid '70s she had a recurring role in hit series "Chico and the Man" (NBC 1974-78). In 1989 she appeared in the Eddie Murphy/Richard Pryor film "Harlem Nights" (1989) and two years later co-starred with Redd Foxx in the short-lived TV series "The Royal Family" (CBS 1991-92).

But her biggest acting role came with a starring part in the series "Touched By An Angel" (CBS 1994-2003), which ran for nine seasons and earned Reese multiple awards. Reese continued acting into the 2010s and passed away on November 19, 2017 in Los Angeles at the age of 86.