Her autobiography, Delta Lady: A Memoir, was published in April 2016. She is currently a painter and has exhibited her work. Coolidge now lives in Fallbrook, California. Coolidge married Tatsuya Suda on June 19, 2004, in the Cook Islands: Suda is a Japanese citizen who retired in 2010, after a tenure of over twenty-five years as a professor at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (UC Irvine). She was the "sweet little Indian girl" named "Raven" in the Grateful Dead collaboration "Cowboy Movie" on David Crosby's album If I Could Only Remember My Name.Ĭoolidge was also involved with Leon Russell and Joe Cocker during their Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour. Rita leaving Stills for Nash has been cited as a contributing factor behind the initial 1970 breakup of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Coolidge previously had romantic liaisons with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They have one daughter, Casey, born in 1974. Coolidge was married to Kris Kristofferson from 1973 to 1980. Personal lifeĬoolidge is the daughter of Dick and Charlotte Coolidge, a minister and schoolteacher, with sisters Linda and Priscilla, and brother Raymond. "Time" ended up on the 1973 album Chronicles by Booker T. Jim took the melody from Rita's song and didn't give her credit for writing it. Her sister Priscilla wound up recording it with her husband, Booker T. Rita and Jim were up there in the guest house and invited me to join in on writing this song with them called "Time". I know because in the Delaney & Bonnie days, I lived in John Garfield's old house in the Hollywood Hills and there was a guest house with an upright piano in it. Though only Gordon has been officially credited with this part, the band's keyboardist Bobby Whitlock claims, "Jim took that piano melody from his ex-girlfriend, Rita Coolidge.
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Clapton, impressed by the piece, convinced Gordon to allow it to be used as part of the song in the coda section. In the recording of the original hit "Layla" by Eric Clapton's band Derek and the Dominos in 1970, Clapton returned to the studio where he heard the band's drummer Jim Gordon playing a piano piece he had allegedly composed himself separately. In 2006, she recorded a standards album, And So Is Love. The two married in 1973 and recorded several duet albums, which sold well and earned the duo a Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1974 for "From the Bottle to the Bottom", and in 1976 for "Lover Please".Ĭoolidge's greatest success on the pop charts came during 1977–78 with four consecutive top 25 hits, remakes of Jackie Wilson's "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher", Boz Scaggs' "We're All Alone", The Temptations' "The Way You Do The Things You Do", and Marcia Hines' "You".Ĭoolidge also was among the first hosts on VH1, a U.S. He got off in Memphis with her, rather than continue to his intended destination in Nashville. In November 1970, she met Kris Kristofferson at the Los Angeles airport when they were both catching the same flight to Tennessee. She was featured in Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour and album, singing Russell's and Bonnie Bramlett's song "Superstar." She became known as "The Delta Lady" and inspired Russell to write a song of the same name for her. She sang for Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Harry Chapin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Dave Mason, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills. After singing around Memphis (including a stint singing jingles), she was discovered by Delaney & Bonnie, who took her to Los Angeles where, besides her work with Delaney & Bonnie, she became a popular background singer on many other people's albums. During the 1970s and 1980s, she charted hits on Billboard magazine's pop, country, adult contemporary, and jazz charts and won two Grammy Awards with fellow musician and then-husband Kris Kristofferson.Ĭoolidge is a graduate of Florida State University.
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Rita Coolidge (born May 1, 1945) is an American recording artist.