Biography
Born as Flora Yvonne Coleman in Richmond, Virginia, Fair got her start as a latter-day member of the re-formulated Chantels and the James Brown Revue. While performing with Brown, she recorded the song "I Found You", which he later re-worked into his own signature hit "I Got You (I Feel Good)".
She signed to Motown Records in the early 1970s as a result of her work with Chuck Jackson and she appeared in a minor role as a chanteuse in the film, Lady Sings the Blues. Fair then joined up with producer Norman Whitfield for a series of singles in a hard funk vein: "Love Ain't No Toy", "Walk Out the Door If You Wanna", and her cover version of "Funky Music Sho' 'Nuff Turns Me On". All these featured on her only album for Motown in 1975 called The Bitch Is Black, which was re-released on CD for the first time more than 30 years later.
Her remake of the Kim Weston/Gladys Knight semi-standard "It Should Have Been Me" dented the lower end of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1976. The track proved a big hit in the UK, where it climbed to number 5 in February 1976, Fair's only UK hit record. In addition, the song featured in a special episode of BBC TV programme The Vicar of Dibley, entitled "The Handsome Stranger", originally broadcast on 25 December 2006.
Read more about this topic: Yvonne Fair
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