The voice behind a hundred records you already know

Jocelyn Brown was born in Kinston, North Carolina, into a family full of singers. Her aunt Barbara Roy sang in the group Ecstasy, Passion & Pain, and her mother, two aunts, a cousin and her grandmother were all accomplished singers. She started in gospel choirs in Brooklyn and became a favourite soloist at her uncle’s church in Washington, D.C.

Eventually she moved toward secular music, singing with a local band called Machine and with the New York funk and disco group Kleeer. Through the late 1970s she worked with an astonishing roster that includes Cerrone, Change, the Salsoul Orchestra, Luther Vandross and Incognito, and she was a guest vocalist on two number one dance hits with Patrick Adams’s studio band Musique. In 1980 she sang backup in Bette Midler’s concert film Divine Madness as one of the Harlettes.

Her own name finally appeared in 1984 with “Somebody Else’s Guy”, which she co-wrote; it reached number two on the Billboard R&B chart and became the title of her first album. Two years later came “Love’s Gonna Get You”. Her solo career never fully took off, though, and she kept singing on other people’s records. She toured the world as a backing vocalist for Boy George with Culture Club in 1985, and in 1987 she co-wrote his UK hit “Keep Me in Mind”.

Her lines kept travelling. In 1990 Snap! sampled “I’ve got the power” from “Love’s Gonna Get You” for “The Power”, and it inspired Bizarre Inc.’s UK top three hit. George Michael sampled “Somebody Else’s Guy” in “Too Funky” in 1992. She has sung on 23 UK hits, eight of them reaching the top twenty, and has lived in London since 1990. She still records house music, and “Always There” is one of the places her voice turns up.