Sandra Reaves-Phillips, the actress and singer that showed up in the movies ‘Round Twelve o’clock at night and Lean on Me and depicted 6 fabulous queens in a one-woman, excursion de pressure performance, has actually passed away. She was 79.
Reaves-Phillips passed away Friday at her home in Queens, household speaker Sandra Lanman informed The Hollywood Press reporter. She had actually remained in stopping working health and wellness considering that diminishing a stage throughout an efficiency of Raisin in St. Louis in 2004 and sustaining severe automobile crashes in 2014 and ’15 in New York City.
The South Carolina indigenous functioned contrary Maurice Hines in his 2006 Broadway musical Hot Feet, and she depicted Mom Younger and Bertha Mae Little, specifically, in Raisin on Broadway and nationwide and European trips and in a 1999 off-Broadway manufacturing of Rollin’ on the T.O.B.A.
Reaves-Phillips was included with saxophonist Dexter Gordon in Bertrand Tavernier’s ‘Round Twelve o’clock at night (1986) in the function of Buttercup, and in the Morgan Freeman-starring Lean on Me (1989 ), routed by John G. Avildsen, she was Mrs. Powers, the songs educator that leads her pupils in the title tune.
The manufacturing that ideal showcased the breadth of her substantial skill was The Late, Terrific Ladies of Blues & & Jazz, where she caught the songs and characters of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Seas, Billie Vacation, Dinah Washington and Mahalia Jackson. She explored around the nation and abroad with the program for greater than 20 years.
She likewise produced and explored with 3 various other one-woman programs: Vibrant and Brassy Blues; Heart to Heart, an R&B performance; and a homage to Jackson.
Birthed on Dec. 23, 1944, in Mullins, South Carolina, to a solitary adolescent mommy, Rosa Lee, Reaves-Phillips was increased by her granny Mathilda, joining her in the areas to choose fruits, veggies and cotton.
“You go six in the morning, leave six in the evening, and you get up the next morning and do the same thing,” she informed a recruiter years later on.
When she was 15, she transferred to New york city to cope with her mommy and had her very first youngster a number of years later on. She started executing at amateur evenings in regional clubs and existed concerning her age in order to make $15 for 3 programs an evening.
Reaves-Phillips authorized a recording agreement that never ever acquired grip, however a spontaneous choice to register for the Al Fann Theatrical Set in Harlem noted a transforming factor in her profession.
Reaves-Phillips likewise stuck out in the nationwide excursion of One Mo’ Time and in its 1990 off-Broadway follow up, And More Mo’; played Smith in Champeen; remained in Ain’t Nothin’ however cry and the initial Paris best of Black and Blue; and carried out in global jazz events and in a scripture performance at the Vatican for Pope John Paul II.
On tv, she was on An Additional Globe, Regulation & & Order, Murder: Life on the Road and Strangers With Sweet and functioned together with Ann-Margret in the 1994 NBC telefilm Following Her Heart.
Survivors include her kid, Lacy Darryl Phillips, a recording musician, supervisor and choreographer, and her child, Marishka Shanice Phillips, a star, singer, author, supervisor and acting trainer.
2 of her last efficiencies came at Marian’s Jazz Club in Bern, Switzerland in 2014 and at the Set Of Three Movie Theater in New York City for her kid’s birthday event in 2019.