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Etta Britt
Pop
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It all started with a hairbrush. As a youngster, Etta Britt (born Melissa Prewitt) would spend hours at her bedroom mirror, belting out Supremes songs into her Stanley hairbrush. But the seasoned veteran, who has toured the world and shared a stage or recording studio with everyone from Engelbert Humperdinck to REO Speedwagon, didn’t want to be Diana Ross. Her ambition was to be Mary Wilson. Chances are you’ve heard her voice or seen her on TV in a background vocalist capacity. But, in spite of her modest ambition, the chance is even greater that when you hear Etta Britt sing front and center as a solo artist, relegating her to the background will pretty much be an impossible task. With what she calls a “cool groove record” — her first album for the Wrinkled Records label — Etta stakes her claim as one of the most versatile singers working today. She also happens to write a heart-piercing, soul-affirming tune from time to time. Think Bonnie Raitt meets John Hiatt.
Born in Lancaster, Ky., a town of 3,500 south of Lexington, her family moved to Louisville when Melissa was in second grade, returning to Lancaster in the middle of her junior year of high school. “My dad was a truck driver and he couldn’t be settled,” she says with a laugh. “Unfortunately, I have a little bit of that in me. I’m always ready for the next thing.” At age 11, Melissa first became Etta thanks to her little sister. “She called me Etta and I called her Myrna. We don’t know why. It could’ve been a couple of old ladies in our hometown out in the country. But we don’t know.”
Although she first made her way to Nashville at 20, demo record in hand, her “big break” would come when she returned to Music City in 1978 to audition for a spot in Dave & Sugar, a country-music trio led by Dave Rowland and backed by two female singers — at the time Vicki Baker and Sue Powell. Having heard about the audition through her dad, whose truck-driving coworker was Sue Powell’s father, Melissa traveled to Atlanta where Dave & Sugar were doing a show for the Oak Ridge Boys, bravely approaching Rowland backstage to tell him she was interested in joining the group. After a couple of weeks, she received a call from Rowland asking her to audition. “I guess he liked my boldness in driving to Atlanta and getting backstage,” she says. After auditioning, just two weeks later, she was sitting in her apartment in Lexington, Ky., eating fried chicken and watching Happy Days, when the call came asking her to join the group. Mere weeks later, she would be playing gigs in front of crowds of 30,000 or more. Melissa was with the trio from 1979 to 1985, during which time they were nominated for CMA Vocal Group of the Year five years in a row, and toured with Kenny Rogers, Dottie West, Tammy Wynette, Gallagher and Conway Twitty, among many others. The experience led to countless TV appearances — everything from Pop! Goes the Country and Solid Gold to the Dinah Shore Show and Dance Fever. |
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