| Vanessa
Williams
began her singing career as the Miss
America pageant winner who'd been forced
to renounce her title for posing in
Penthouse magazine. Williams not only
put the scandal behind her, she all but
obliterated it, turning out a series of
slick, sophisticated hits that made her
one of the most popular adult
contemporary R&B singers of her time. In
addition to her broad crossover appeal,
she established a parallel acting career
in both film and television, ending the
'90s as a highly successful all-around
entertainer.
Vanessa Lynn Williams was born March
18, 1963, in the upstate New York town
of Millwood to parents who were both
music teachers. She loved performing
musical theater as a teenager, and won a
scholarship to study it at Syracuse
University in 1981. In the meantime, she
began entering beauty pageants, with
considerable success; in 1983, she
represented New York in the Miss America
pageant and became the first
African-American woman ever to be
crowned the winner. Unfortunately, her
triumph was short-lived. Williams had
posed for a series of nude photos for
Penthouse prior to her historic victory,
and when the magazine published them in
1984, the ensuing scandal forced her to
resign as Miss America. Undaunted,
Williams began to pursue her first love,
singing; she backed George Clinton on
his 1986 album R&B Skeletons in the
Closet, including the single "Do Fries
Go With That Shake?" Williams also
returned to acting, making her feature
film debut with a small role in The
Pickup Artist in 1987; the same year,
she married her manager, Ramon Harvey.
All the renewed exposure eventually
helped land her a record deal with
Mercury/Polygram subsidiary Wing.
Williams' debut album, The Right
Stuff, was released in 1988, featuring a
mix of urban dance-pop and adult
contemporary balladry. The title track
was a decent-sized hit, and the ballad "Dreamin'"
became Williams' first Top Ten single,
going all the way to number one on the
R&B charts. The Right Stuff went gold,
and Williams subsequently appeared in
several TV movies. Her 1991 sophomore
set The Comfort Zone was a star-maker;
it spawned another R&B chart-topper in
"Running Back to You," but the real
story was the ballad "Save the Best for
Last," a ubiquitous across-the-board
smash that became Williams' first number
one hit on the pop charts. The title
track solidified Williams' growing
reputation for smooth, sexy adult pop,
and the album went on to sell over two
million copies. In 1993, Williams' duet
with Brian McKnight, "Love Is," became
another huge hit when it was featured on
the soundtrack of Beverly Hills 90210.
In 1994, Williams returned to her
roots by accepting her first starring
role on Broadway, taking over the lead
in Kiss of the Spider Woman; she also
appeared on a re-recorded version of the
cast album. Late that year, she also
released her third album, The Sweetest
Days, which found her branching out into
jazzy pop and torch songs in addition to
her usual urban and adult contemporary
fare. It also featured material by
Babyface and Sting, and its upscale,
sophisticated ambience gave Williams her
second platinum album. In 1995, Williams
was tabbed to sing the commercial
version of "Colors of the Wind," the
theme to the Disney film Pocahontas; not
only was it a huge hit, it also won an
Academy Award. 1996 brought a divorce
from manager Harvey and the holiday
album Star Bright; most notably,
Williams landed her biggest feature film
role to date when she starred opposite
Arnold Schwarzenegger in that year's
Eraser, and she followed it with an
appearance in the ensemble drama Soul
Food in 1997. 1997 also brought her
fourth proper album, Next, which didn't
attract quite as much attention as its
predecessors. After the release of
Greatest Hits: The First Ten Years in
late 1998, Williams remained relatively
quiet on the musical front, save for the
occasional live performance event; she
concentrated more on her acting career,
and was prominently featured in Dance
With Me (1998), Light It Up (1999), and
the remake of Shaft (2000). In 1999,
Williams remarried to L.A. Lakers
basketball player Rick Fox. |
