Biography

Soul singer and songwriter Gloria Scott is revered among soul aficionados for What Am I Gonna Do, her 1974 debut album produced by Barry White. Although it featured a pair of charting singles, the LP was lost in the shuffle during a year in which White cranked out album projects for himself, Love Unlimited, Love Unlimited Orchestra, Tom Brock, and Gene Page (the latter two of whom also assisted with Scott's sessions). Several songs off the LP became deep classics, particularly in Europe, where Scott has continued to perform into the 2020s. Active since the mid-'60s, she has enjoyed a lengthy career with links to other R&B legends such as Sly Stone, Ike & Tina Turner, and Mary Wilson. She released her second album, So Wonderful, in 2022. Gloria Scott was raised in Texas and California. Born in Port Arthur, she moved before her first birthday to Houston, where she started singing and took piano lessons. She and her family relocated to East Palo Alto in her early teens, and later moved to Sunnydale. At a school dance, she got on-stage to sing with the Mojo Men, and ended up performing with the band on a more formal basis. This led to the group's Sly Stone writing and producing Scott's debut single, "I Taught Him," released on Warner Bros. in 1964. Scott continued performing in and around the Bay Area, and for a while was an Ikette, touring with Ike & Tina Turner. Post-Ikettes, a song she wrote with Herman Chaney caught the attention of Barry White, who ended up signing her. White produced Scott's 1974 debut album, What Am I Gonna Do. The second LP released on the Casablanca label (after Kiss' self-titled debut and before Parliament's Up for the Down Stroke), it yielded "What Am I Gonna Do" and "Just as Long as We're Together (In My Life There Will Never Be Another)," singles that respectively reached number 74 and number 14 on Billboard's Hot Soul Singles chart. The second A-side received enough support from club DJs to scale up the disco chart to number 14. Scott recorded a follow-up with H.B. Barnum as producer, but it was shelved. Nothing else materialized from Scott and White's affiliation. Scott went on to perform and record with Mary Wilson for a couple years. Thanks to the enduring support of European soul fans, Scott later became an in-demand performer, regularly appearing at the annual Baltic Soul Weekender in Germany, debuting there in 2008. Meanwhile, What Am I Gonna Do was reissued in multiple editions. The title song, along with "(A Case Of) Too Much Lovemakin'" and the B-side "That's What You Always Say," were licensed for numerous compilations. Scott recorded infrequently, releasing the original song "It's So Wonderful" and a cover of Ten City's "That's the Way Love Is," and in 2022 finally released her second album, So Wonderful, produced by Andrew McGuinness and issued on the Acid Jazz label. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi