“My first love of music is gospel. I can't even really explain how music touches a person,” Ruth Pointer tells me over the phone. “I'm sure I'm not the only one, because it's always proven to me that when I walk on stage and see an audience in front of me — it must touch them in the same way.”
As the last surviving founder of the iconic band The Pointer Sisters, she's walked on some of the biggest stages in the world. Pointer, along with her sisters June, Bonnie and Anita, sold over 130 millions albums globally. She is a music icon. I don’t know what I was expecting when I called her, but when I finally got her on the line, she immediately apologized.
“I’m sorry I missed your call,” Pointer says, through the phone in her home in Framingham, Massachusetts. “Those telemarketers are always calling me.” Ditto. She’s warm and down to the Earth. Immediately, I like her.
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As a small child in West Oakland, California, Pointer grew up around music. With her father being the pastor at The Church of God, Pointer and her three sisters were first exposed to gospel music — an introduction that would later lead them to be some of the biggest stars of ‘70s and ‘80s.
But just down the road was another experience with music. The Watson’s and their nine children would sing gospel music, calling themselves The Watson Sisters. “I remember coming back home and telling my sister ‘We we could sing like that.’ And that really sort of started me and my sisters singing as a group together.”
As the sisters grew, they returned to the place where they first received formal training and found their initial audience: their parents' church. There, they sang together in the choir, often performing one of their favorite songs, "The Blood." A song Pointer first heard the Watson’s sing in their home.
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In 1973, The Pointer Sisters released their first album. But despite the success, Pointer says that as sisters, singing together was one of the most natural things they could do.
“We didn't read music,” Pointer laughs. “We would go in the studio to sing back up for people, and they would put these piece of music in front of us but we didn’t know how to read it. They would just play it for us and we would sing it. Everything came from memory.”
Eventually, the record’s lead single, “Yes We Can, Can,” climbed to #11 on Billboard’s pop singles chart, followed by another charting single, “Wang Dang Doodle,” penned by Willie Dixon. By the time the album was certified gold, the group had become the year’s most buzzed-about new act. Success continued with the release of the sisters' sophomore album, That’s A Plenty. It showcased their now-renowned blend of musical styles, but this time with a twist: a country-western track, “Fairytale.” When the single made waves on both the country and pop charts, the sisters became the first Black women to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.
Maintaining their status in jazz, Motown, bebob and now country, The Pointer Sisters rode their success, all while starting their own families. But by 1976, June had missed several performances due to reported health issues, while Bonnie was considering a solo career. In 1977, the Pointers released Having a Party, their final album with Blue Thumb Records. Later that year, Bonnie left the group and signed with Motown Records.
“I hope we've inspired [young Black artists] already, and I hope, we continue to inspire them to step out of comfort zones that have been put up, the boxes that they've been put in,” Pointer says.
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Over the following years, Ruth, Anita and June continued to move forward — even having their own solo records at some point — and the group earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1994. But in 2006, at the age of 52, June died of cancer. Bonnie’s death followed after in 2020, resulting from cardiac arrest at age 69. Just two years later, Ruth would lose her last sister Anita, at 74.
Today, Ruth Pointer, along with her daughter and granddaughter, maintain a busy touring schedule, performing around the world, preserving the legacy of Pointer’s sisters.
“It's challenging because me and my sisters had such a bond because we had sang together all of our lives that it, it became effortless for us because we knew what the other sister was going to sing,” Pointer says. “And with my daughter and my granddaughter, that's not the case. They had to be trained, and they had to study what my sisters were singing.”
Soon the trio will visit Choctaw Casinos in Durant, alongside the The Commodores and The Spinners for the An Evening of Icons Tour on Oct. 5, 2024.
“It was such a special time for music,” Pointer says before we end the call. “It was such a uplifting time — were in dance mode during those years. It was just such a joyful time that hopefully the Icons Tour can bring back a lot of those memories.”
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