Name |
Martha Wash |
Height |
|
Naionality |
American |
Date of Birth |
28-December-1953 |
Place of Birth |
San Francisco, California, United States |
Famous for |
Singing |
Martha Wash is an American R&B, pop, soul, house singer/songwriter known for her distinctive and powerful soprano voice.
Wash began her music career as a backing singer for Sylvester. With fellow backing singer Izora Rhodes, she was half of Two Tons O' Fun, who would later be renamed The Weather Girls. As such, they were responsible for providing much of the firepower behind several of Sylvester's earliest releases — often their voices were mixed so that Sylvester was actually the background singer and Wash's and Rhodes' voices were upfront. When they left to pursue a career on their own, they achieved success with a handful of disco-oriented tracks, culminating in the 1982 release "It's Raining Men", a worldwide hit that peaked at #2 on the UK singles chart, #1 in Australia, #1 on the Euro Hot 100, #46 on the Billboard Hot 100, #34 on the U.S. R&B chart, and #1 on the U.S. Hot Dance Club Play chart. It reached the top ten in numerous other countries. "It's Raining Men" receives regular play in dance clubs and R&B radio to this day: it stands as one of the classic songs of the late-disco and Hi-NRG era. The Weather Girls scored moderate, lesser-known hits with "Dear Santa (Bring Me a Man for Christmas)" and "No One Can Love You More Than Me" in 1985.Later, when the Weather Girls disbanded, Wash continued to lend her vocals to various dance and house music tracks. Several of them became massive pop, R&B and dance hits. She sang lead vocals on all three of Black Box's U.S. top-forty hits, including the top-ten smashes "Everybody Everybody" and "Strike It Up," as well as "I Don't Know Anybody Else," which charted at #23 in the United States. Wash, however, was not featured in any of the music videos as it was customary for Katrin Quinol, a French model, to be used to lip-sync the lyrics. All three of these hit singles continued to receive regular club-play and mainstream radio airplay as of late April 2010. In addition, Wash sang lead vocals on the lesser-known Black Box tracks, "Fantasy," which charted at #5 in Great Britain, "Open Your Eyes," and "Hold On." All six of these songs appear on the Black Box album Dreamland. Also, she performed uncredited lead vocals on Seduction's "You're My One and Only (True Love)," and lead vocals on C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)," which hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1991.