Platters Singer Zola Taylor Dies at 69

Pioneering female vocalist, Zola Taylor died yesterday. She had been bedridden following several strokes and died at Parkview Community Hospital in Riverside County, California from complications of pneumonia, her nephew said.Zola Taylor was the only female member of The Platters from 1954 to 1964, when the group produced most of their popular singles. The all-male group had just signed with Mercury after its single "Only You" topped the charts and its manager thought they needed a female voice to soften their sound. At the time when she joined the Platters, it wasn't common to see coed groups. After Zola, coed groups starting popping up all over.Founding Platters member Herb Reed said he spotted Taylor, the sister of Cornell Gunter of the Coasters, rehearsing with a girl group in 1955 and knew immediately she had the charisma and vocal chops the R&B group needed.Herb Reed:

She was a very pretty young lady and what a great, great smile and she had this baby voice that everyone liked.

One of their first hits, "The Great Pretender" raced to the No. 1 spot on both R & B and pop music charts in the U.S. and Europe, according to "The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul" by Irwin Stambler.

It was a great surprise to everyone, we were the first Afro-American group to have a girl singer. That was the talk of the nation. All of the sudden, other groups started looking for girls

The group maintained mainstream success until the early 1960s, then after a series of legal and managment issues, the band found themselves out of the spot light.Zola herself went through the ringer. Her claims that she was the wife of famed singer Frankie Lymon, who died of a drug overdose failed when she couldn't produce a marriage certificate. Later it was determined that she was in fact married to Lymon and held specific rights to his estate.Her nephew, Alfie Robinson, her closest living relitive explains that his aunt continued touring with other lesser-known acts until 1996 and wed two other times. Her last husband died in 1982, he said. She had no children.The Platters- ??Pretender??