Early Life
Gaynor was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Queenie May Proctor and Daniel Fowles. Gaynor's grandmother always lived nearby and was involved in her upbringing. "There was always music in our house," Gaynor wrote in her autobiography, I Will Survive. She enjoyed listening to the radio, and to records by Nat "King" Cole and Sarah Vaughan. Her father played the ukulele and guitar and sang professionally in nightclubs with a group called Step 'n' Fetchit. Her brothers sang gospel and formed a quartet with a friend. Gaynor was not allowed to sing with the all-male group, nor was her younger brother, Arthur, because he was too young. Arthur later acted as a tour manager for Gaynor. The family was relatively poor, but Gaynor recalls the house being filled with laughter and happiness, and the dinner table being open to neighbourhood friends. They moved to a housing project in 1960 and Gloria grew up as a tomboy. "All through my young life I wanted to sing, although nobody in my family knew it," Gaynor wrote in her autobiography. Gloria was a member of her school choir, the mixed chorus, and the girls' glee club. Because no one in the house paid attention to her singing she never got the feeling that any of them thought she had a good voice but after an initial rush of stage fright before her first solo, Gaynor's confidence in her singing grew. Gloria graduated from high school with honors and knew she wanted a singing career. To appease her mother, who wanted Gaynor to have "something to fall back on," she went to beauty school and took business courses. While she continued to practice her singing, she worked many non-singing jobs in the years after high school, including a job at Bamberger's department store.
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