Shirley Caesar

“I got my call to the ministry when I was in college in 1957,” says Caesar, who was majoring in business education at North Carolina State College. She had to put her studies and her plans on becoming an evangelist on hold, however, when the Caravans, a fast-rising gospel group from Chicago, passed through Durham the following year. They were minus a member. Caesar convinced leader Albertina Walker that she knew all the parts. Walker was so impressed with what she heard that the invited the teenager to join the group. Caesar moved to Chicago and sang with the Caravans for the next eight years. During her tenure, the group boasted other dynamic lead singers, most notably Inez Andrews and Cassietta George, but the diminutive Caesar’s emotionally galvanizing delivery and highly animated stage demeanor were central in making the Caravans the most popular female gospel group since the Ward Singers. Caesar’s intense leads were featured on such Caravans’ hits as “I Won’t Be Back,” “No Coward Soldiers,” “Holy Boldness,” and “Choose Ye This Day.”

Caesar preached her first sermon in Chicago while a member of the Caravans, but on record and in concert her spoken testimony was limited to sermonettes within the bodies of songs such as “Hallelujah It’s Done.” By the early ‘60s, during breaks in the group’s schedule, she began getting offers to sing and preach apart from the Caravans. Sometimes, however, last-minute engagements would come along for the group, and Walker would ask Caesar to cancel her own.

“I did not like disappointing people,” Caesar says. “Tina would give me time off, and then dates would come in, but my first allegiance was to the Caravans. I knew that something would have to give.”

Caesar finally left the Caravans in 1966, signed with Hob Records, and began appearing as “Evangelist Shirley Caesar.” During her first few months as a solo artist, she made more money than she had in her entire eight years with the Caravans. “It went so well,” she recalls, “that I called my mom and asked her to send Ann.” Ann Belle Caesar became a charter member of her sister’s new backing group, the Caesar Singers.