Dr. Elaine Richardson has lived many lives. From the watchful eye of her Jamaican mother, who had a sixth grade education, but taught her children the ABCs; to the streets of Cleveland, where she became involved with drugs, prostitution and other criminal activities, losing many friends to death or jail, Richardson has defied the odds. “I’m so glad I don’t look like what I’ve been through,” she says. “My mother had this hunger for education and a better life.
“I think she sewed that inside of me, into my spirit, and when I was on the streets, I would feel in my spirit that I should be doing better, I could be doing better and that wasn’t what I was born for,” she says. “I always talk to people about that: We’re all born for the purpose that God created us for. We have that dream deep down inside us, and we can’t let bad things make us forget who we are and want to be.”
If you want to know how she made it from the streets of Cleveland and New York City to the head of the classroom as professor of English at Ohio State University; how she became caring mother, motivational speaker and accomplished vocalist, listen to her songs. While she doesn’t sing about the birth of her second child after being rushed to the hospital during a drug binge, or the hard times as she struggled through Alcoholics Anonymous and getting clean, she does sing about the parts of her journey that we can all relate to, and the ones that will uplift her audience. Perhaps, in many ways, that’s the best way to experience her story – through the songs that have bubbled up in her heart over the years and made their way onto the page, into the studio and on the 13 tracks of Elevated, her latest album.
Every day that you have another chance to live, you’ve got another chance to improve your life.
Elevated – Reviewing the Journey
The album opens with “Dance to My Song”, and opens with the lyric, “I’m gonna go to heaven, but not before I live on Earth.” From that moment, the clever lyrics and the dancing jazz rhythm tips the listener off that this isn’t a typical R&B effort. The most striking feature of the opening number is the voice, which has all the character of Billie Holiday, raspy and playful. If you stop after the first track, you’ll never realize the depth and versatility of Richardson’s instrument, which she begins to flex and stretch in the next track, “Halle Berry”, in which she asks the question: “If I looked like Halle Berry, would you get into me?”
“This album is what I wanted to express,” says Richardson. “These are the sounds I want to hear and sing, inspired by the people I meet, the things we talk about – even conversations with my girlfriends – girl talk, relationships and the world condition.”
The album closes with two versions of “You Can’t Keep a Good Girl Down”, followed by “Giving My Life To You”, the artist’s way of giving credit to a higher power for the gifts she’s been given. “Good Girl Down” might be one of the most interesting tracks on the album. It utilizes language clearly related to slavery and the civil rights movement, along with harmonies that are reminiscent of both gospel and traditional spirituals. Such it is with most tracks on Elevated. You find yourself transported from one time and place to another, from a highest high to the lowest low and from the most joyful to the saddest moments that have been a part of Dr. Elaine Richardson’s life.
