At 77, Memphis gospel artist Elizabeth King is finally feeling like a star

Elizabeth King’s music contains multitudes. Every bit of her 77 years — all the joy and pain she’s known, the love for the family she raised, the car accident that nearly claimed her life and the God that saved her — is there, it can be heard in every inflection and utterance.  

Unless you were a parishioner of the Gospel Truth or New Mount Olive churches, caught her live radio spots on a tiny AM station out of Lakeland or were one of the few collectors to secure her rare early ‘70s singles, you probably haven’t heard King’s singular brand of spiritual music. But this week, she will release her debut album, “Living in the Last Days,” for the local label, Bible & Tire Recording Co. 

A remarkable and powerful collection of soulful gospel music, King says the album is something even more — that it represents the ultimate triumph: of her faith, of her spirit. “Through all my suffering and the things I been through, I know there’s a God,” she says. “That’s what I want to express to people. If you seek him, you will find him. Through my songs, that’s what I try to say.” 

'My child — can I pray with you?’  

God and gospel music were always a part of Elizabeth King’s life. A native of Grenada, raised in Charleston, Mississippi, King was “born into a family that was always in the church. We had preachers in our family, my mom and my daddy was church people, and mom was a great singer,” King says. “That’s just how I was brought up. I started singing with them when I was 3 years old. I could sing, I could talk at that age.” 

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King got married when she was 15. She had her first child soon after — she would go on to raise a family of 15 kids in all. In the early-‘60s she and her husband left Mississippi and moved to Chicago, where they stayed four years, before returning to Memphis in 1966. 

A year or so later, King’s life changed forever. She was working for a florist as a delivery driver making her rounds in South Memphis when she was sideswiped by a drunk driver. The vehicle she was in was hurled across four lanes of traffic, and King wound up face first in a light pole. 

Bloody and disoriented, King was “numb all over my whole body. I could look up and see my forehead had already swollen just that quick. All I could hear was the sirens going off, and people gathered around. I heard a man from the fire department talking — they were worried the truck was going to catch fire.”

King had to be cut out of the vehicle with a saw, and she was rushed to the hospital where she drifted in and out of consciousness.  

“I woke up a few days later. I don’t remember everything, but there was this one little man in a black suit, I thought he was a priest,” says King. “Every morning he would come into my room and say, ‘My child — can I pray with you?’ And all I could remember saying was yes.” 

The man would return to her room each day as she lay recuperating, and prayed with her. 

“After I had been there for a couple weeks, I asked the [nurses] about this priest. I thought he was the [hospital] chaplain or something. They said, ‘We don’t have anybody on our staff who looks like what you describe.’ But I saw him, he came into my room, every morning: 'My child — can I pray with you?’ I couldn’t convince nobody that he was real. But I knew then that he was a spirit coming from God to let me know that it was going to be OK.”

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From the Gospel Souls to The Stewart Family

Following her brush with death, King’s faith would become even more pronounced. Her singing would take on an even more powerful feeling, informed by the suffering she had endured and the grace of the God who'd spared her life. 

Although she would deal with the pain and aftereffects of the accident for the rest of her days, King would resume singing by the late ’60s. She was doing mostly solo performances when she was approached by a member of the Gospel Souls, a local all-male combo, in 1970.

“He asked if I would be interested singing lead for a male group,” says King. “I guess I was one of the first females that had an all-male group. At the time it wasn’t very common. It was a different sound, but our voices went well together.”  

Six months after joining up with the Gospel Souls, King found herself in the recording studio for the first time. They would go on to work with Memphis spiritual music impresarios/producers Style Wooten and Pastor Juan Shipp. Over the next couple years, King cut 10 sides with the Gospel Souls, and was featured on six. 

Listening to her early ‘70s tracks, King’s songs are haunting evocations of her faith. And yet it’s not hard to picture her cutting hits for soul labels like Stax or Hi in that era. But secular music was not King’s calling. And pursuing a professional gospel career would’ve meant tour and travel and family sacrifices that King wasn’t willing to make.  

“I had small children, and I didn’t want to separate myself from them. They were more important at that time than anything I wanted to do for myself,” she says. “All of them were a year apart, it would have been hard for someone to keep that many small children. I was a family type person, that was more important to me than going on the road.” 

For the next few decades, King continued to work and raise her family. But music was always a part of their lives. “I used to bam on the piano a little bit when the kids were small. My daughter wanted to play the piano at 8 months old. When she got to be 3 she said, 'I want to play just like you' — I said, ‘No I don’t want you to play like me,’ so I sent her to music school,” jokes King. “All my children were musical. One of my sons played bass for Isaac Hayes for six years. So I passed on the music to the children.”  

“After the children had grown — and it took a while for all of them to get grown,” she says, laughing, “but after they got grown and married and had their own children, they hired me to work for them, as their daycare, as their [nanny].” 

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In between running her granny daycare, King would continue to sing in church, and even started doing a weekly radio spot. “Eventually, I organized a family group with my kids, The Stewart Family — and we traveled and performed in St. Louis, Chicago. I was still going, but I was just a local talent, you know what I mean,” says King, who would only record in the studio one other time after the ‘70s. “I never really thought that I would get a chance to do anything like that again.” 

'Me? After all these years?' 

The opportunity to record, and to pursue a career in earnest, would come in 2019, thanks to local gospel revival label Bible & Tire Recording Co. 

The record company was launched by Bruce Watson, a longtime executive with Mississippi’s Fat Possum label, a pivotal force in the discovery and rediscovery of a generation of Hill Country blues arts. With his own Big Legal Mess label, Watson had done the same for a group of veteran soul and R&B artists from Memphis and the region. 

But Watson had always had a deep, abiding passion for gospel music as well — specifically the soulful classic gospel of the '60s and '70s recorded in Memphis. Watson had previously explored the Bluff City’s rich, if somewhat forgotten, gospel past in 2014, with the release of “The Soul of Designer Records,” a multi-disc box set focusing on the label run by Style Wooten from 1968 to 1978.

A few years later, Watson did a deal to acquire the catalog of Pastor Juan Shipp's D-Vine Spirituals label. Launched in 1971, and operating for most of that decade, the D-Vine Spirituals' output was only known to a few hardcore record collectors. 

Watson began transferring hundreds of tapes, with an eye toward releasing the material — starting with a compilation that prominently featured King’s '70s recordings with the Gospel Souls. In getting to know and work with Shipp, Watson realized that many of the original D-Vine artists, including King, were still alive, active and performing locally. That cemented Watson's decision to formally launch Bible & Tire in 2019. 

That fall, Shipp reached out to King and asked if she wanted to record again. “He said I got somebody that want to record you. I said, ‘Me? After all these years? You need to quit playing.’ That’s what I told him,” says King, laughing. 

“But later on that evening, Bruce called me back and said, 'Can you be in the studio at 10 o’clock the next morning?' I said, 'I haven’t even rehearsed' — but he told me, ‘I got guys that can play for anybody.’ If they can play for anybody, then they can play for me. So I got there next morning at three minutes to 10. I walked in the door and introduced myself. Bruce said: ‘We know who you are, Ms. King. Do you feel like singing?’ Well, I stood in front of that that little mic at five minutes after 10 and I didn’t stop singing 'til five minutes after 2.” 

King’s return to the studio — backed by the Bible & Tire house band, The Sacred Souls Sound Section, led by guitar ace Will Sexton, guitarist Matt Ross-Spang, bassist Mark Stuart, organist Al Gamble and drummer George Sluppick — was instant magic.

“We brought her in and it was amazing,” recalls Watson. “She just started singing and we knew that this was something really special. These artists who are in their 70s, are probably singing better now than ever and able to make you feel this music in way that’s… it’s just amazing.” 

Just a couple months after her session for Bible & Tire, the label approached her with an opportunity to go on the road, to France, as part of a gospel revue package with Mississippi group The Como Mamas. After the longest plane ride of her life, King spent three weeks playing to sold-out crowds across the country. 

“It’s the first time I really felt like I was a star,” says King. “The audiences are different. Here, the people cheer you along while you’re performing. Over there they sit in their seat, look at you and listen. And when you finish singing and sit down, they cheer just like you done made a touchdown. That’s how it was. It was just marvelous over there.” 

These days, King’s career revival is being embraced by her large family — 15 children, 58 grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren and even one great-great-grandchild — most of all. 

“My grandkids and great-grands, they say, ‘We didn’t know grandma could sing!’ It makes me feel good to know they are enjoying what I do. They’re very excited for me,” she says, chuckling. “Of course, my daughter is always teasing me saying, ‘Mama is a senior citizen, but she ain’t got time to go to the senior citizen meetings, ‘cause she’s all up in the streets trying to sing.” 

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'I know God is always going to be with me'

On the eve of her album release, King is feeling especially grateful for the opportunity she's been given. In addition to releasing "Living in the Last Days," Bible & Tire is at work on a documentary of King's life. 

“Every day now, it counts. They promise you 70 years, and I’m well past that promise. So when I get up each day, I really appreciate it,” she says. “Whatever I got to do in this life, I know I got to do it now.” 

Looking back on her 77 years, King acknowledges the hardships she’s faced. “I’ve led a difficult life at times. I started working at 9 years old, I worked for years for 2 dollars a day in the fields as a child. I worked full time into my 70s and never made more than $10 an hour. I don’t have no money, but I am rich when you look how far I’ve come, how far my family has come.”  

For King, the impact of the accident that nearly cut her life short is still with her to this day. She still aches and struggles, but whenever she feels that way, she forces herself to move, to sing, to keep pushing. 

“To this day, the pain is still there in my body, and I still remember,” she says. “Every time things go bad in my life I remember that day. And I know God is always going to be with me until He calls me home. That’s why I’m going to keep on running so I can see what the end is going to be. I know He gives me joy every day, and I just know the end is going to be great. That’s my hope.”