Wendy Moten: A Hero’s Journey

To tell the epic, rollicking story of Memphis native Wendy Moten, we must begin back in the mysterious late 20th century, when a certain trend in pop vocal style emerged to such a degree that scientists now call it “The Melismatic Age.” (Not really.) That would be the time when melisma came to dominate soul and pop singing — the kind of free riffing over a single vowel sound that Whitney Houston made famous, also exemplified by Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson, and others. Even those “others” included some stellar singers, masters of their craft, because singing melismatic improvisations convincingly relies on years of training and discipline, typically in the Black church. Just ask Memphis’ own purveyor of the form, Wendy Moten.

Naturally, Moten covers a bigger swath of sonic style than that, as fans will see on Friday, February 6th, at the Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center (BPACC), but when telling the story of Wendy Moten, you’d best begin with the years of discipline she’d already put in before her first virtuosic and very melismatic hit raced up the charts in 1993, “Come In Out of the Rain.” 

As with so many Memphis talents, it began in the church, but also in the more select classrooms of one of Overton High School’s most celebrated educators, the late Lulah M. Hedgeman.

“The person I hear in my head every day”
In Moten’s case, she explains, the church was “St. Stephen’s Baptist Church off Chelsea Avenue, and James Adams was the pastor. My dad at that time was just a musical director, and he would make extra money teaching choirs the newest gospel songs. And he was a very popular singer,” she says of her father. 

So was she, and one might trace the ease and presence Moten still has onstage to those pivotal moments when she was 8 years old and the congregation drew out her talent. Before long, she was singing solos. 

“I didn’t have a choice,” she says. “Because my dad was the minister of music, right? And he knew I had a gift. All I knew was, ‘I’m shy, and now I gotta stand in front of all these people?’ It was pretty traumatic. But they gave you that encouragement, too, you know, ‘It’s okay, baby.’” 

Her congregation’s encouragement had her singing well enough to leapfrog over many competitors into what was then the big time: getting into Hedgeman’s class at Overton High School. As Moten says, “Parents would camp out for the night, trying to get [in line to get] their kids in there. And [Hedgeman] would also go to a couple of schools and hand pick some students. I was going to Colonial Junior High at the time, a performing arts school, and she heard me and was like, ‘Okay, I want her.’ I didn’t even know what Overton was about, and I hadn’t met her yet till then. So to be handpicked by her, looking back, was amazing. And then getting to go to Overton High School. I mean, it was a Fame type school. We sang mostly choral and classical music. Theory was the main focus, and academics too, and it was really stressful. 

“But the best thing was, [Hedgeman] also worked with the psychology of things, ‘Mind over matter,’ you know, ‘Think before you speak,’ and she had really high expectations. Which prepped me for the world. She was a mentor. She kept me close, so I was with her all the time. And, you know, outside of my parents, she is the person that I hear in my head every day.”

She likely heard Hedgeman in her head on the day she won a singing competition at the Mid-South Fair at age 16, or years later, during her stint at the University of Memphis, when she was invited to sit in at the Madison Bar and Grill with a band she knew, Come in Berlin. That night, unbeknownst to her, band member Niko Lyras, also a songwriter, producer, and owner of the well-regarded Cotton Row Studios, happened to invite a friend from out of town. 

As Lyras recalls today, speaking from his home in Greece, “Dick Williams was looking for talent. We’d already scored one deal out of Memphis with this girl, Ella Brooks, who he got signed to MCA. And then he started coming to Memphis, and one weekend he came to a Come in Berlin gig. Well, it just so happened, Wendy came in and sat in with the band. He was blown away, of course.”

By then, Moten had been singing with the band M.V.P. at the beloved Captain Bilbo’s, with Lyras occasionally hiring her to sing jingles or demos. “When Wendy first came to the studio, really, she was a baby,” says Lyras. “A gospel lady by the name of Vivian Berryhill, who was a songwriter, brought her in. Wendy sang on a demo for me, and that’s when I was made aware of her incredible, unmistakable voice. That demo was immediately covered by the Jets, a little pop group back then in Minneapolis, and they literally just copied Wendy’s performance.”

Once Dick Williams saw her perform, it was a no-brainer to try adding her to the roster of his fledgling management company. Naturally, he was working with Lyras again. Had they found their next Ella Brooks? Or maybe they were already thinking bigger than that, for, as Moten recounts, Williams was immediately convinced he could make waves for Moten. “He was like, ‘I definitely can get you a record deal.’ I’m like, ‘Go for it, young man, go for it.’ About a couple of months later, he was like, ‘I’ve got songs for you. I’m gonna come over. We’re gonna record them at Cotton Row.’ And ‘Come In Out of the Rain’ was one of the songs that we recorded. A month or two later, he had a bidding war going on between EMI, Elektra, and Warner Brothers, because if you sounded like Whitney Houston at all, if you were a pop artist, singer, R&B girl, you could get a good record deal — if you had a good manager or a great lawyer. So I fit that mold, and we ended up going with EMI. Yeah, and that changed my life.”

“We can’t break an artist with a ballad.”
It didn’t hurt that Moten’s demos were made at Cotton Row. In those years, Lyras says, the studio was thriving. “We were pretty much the place in Memphis. I mean, Ardent was having a slow spell and we were getting little record deals. And so was Sounds Unreel. The little studios were actually doing more.”

Such was the quality of the demos that the label executives were essentially hearing Moten’s first and biggest hit record — they just didn’t know it yet. As Lyras tells it, “So [Dick Williams] came to Memphis, was enchanted by Wendy, and came up with some money for me to do some demos. And he had a songwriter from Detroit that he introduced us to, Curtiss Boone, and we started writing together with this guy. I also had my partner in crime, Ernest Williamson [Jr.]. Just a great, great Memphis musician, songwriter, and producer. 

 “We wrote a few songs with Curtiss,” Lyras remembers, “including a couple of upbeat songs, and we modeled them on what was happening at the time, with Janet Jackson this, and Minneapolis that. At one point Curtiss brought a ballad in, but it needed a lot of changes. So Ernest and I took it to the lab for surgery and added a bridge and all kinds of stuff. And we ended up with a song, ‘Come In Out of the Rain,’ one of three songs that we demoed. And all of a sudden, the phone started ringing.”

Once the EMI deal was struck, the final recordings were done mostly at Cotton Row. “We used a lot of Memphis musicians, and quite a few from Detroit, where Dick Williams was based. I’d say 80 percent of it was done at Cotton Row. A lot of Memphis musicians who were just up and coming, like Steve Potts and David Smith, played on it. Ernest, of course, played all over the place. Pat Register played. And they also used some great singers from Detroit for backgrounds, the Ridgeway Sisters. They were phenomenal in blending and making quick arrangements. So we did that, delivered the album. It was out of our hands. And they had signed her on the strength of ‘Come In Out of the Rain,’ but somehow, some dummies in the company were saying, ‘No, no, we can’t break an artist with a ballad. No way.’”

“I’ll ride this out and see how far it goes.”
Eventually EMI saw the light, and “Come In Out of the Rain” was released as a single despite that being a formula-defying move. “You know, in Memphis, we just don’t play by the rules,” says Lyras. “So, of all people, Steve Conley at FM 100 decided he was going to spin the record, and it just took off. Everybody jumped on the bandwagon.” Ultimately, Moten’s soulful take on the ballad would peak at number five in Billboard’s adult contemporary charts, and become a top 10 single in the U.K. 

“I even did the show Top of the Pops!” remembers Moten. “Oh, man. 1994, Top of the Pops, that was something else. I was going over to England a lot, maybe twice a year. The Japanese market was a big market for me, too. I was in Japan two or three times a year. And in the ’90s, you could have a big band. Like, I always had a 10-piece band.”

This gives her a pause of disbelief, given the current era’s tight touring economics, but Moten goes on, “It was huge. It was during that Whitney Houston era. There was Whitney, Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, and I was number four. I was EMI’s ‘Whitney,’ because every record company was looking for one. And it was a great run. It was a really huge machine. And I did all the shows, the Jay Lenos and all that. I was Michael Bolton’s opening act with a 10-piece band.”

The membership of that band had shifted, though, as Moten explains. “My band ended up coming from Detroit because Dick Williams lived there. So the second album and third album were done in Detroit, and then that recording band became the touring band.” Her career, it seemed, had reached a reliably lofty cruising altitude. “I couldn’t believe I had a major record deal. That’s the first thing. Because I hadn’t spent my life dreaming about being a star, or singing in front of large audiences, and it just wasn’t what I was thinking about. So, when I got a major record deal, I was just like, you know, ‘I’ll just ride this out and see how far it goes.’”

“And that’s when Julio Iglesias found me”
Which isn’t to say she wasn’t learning along the way. “Dick Williams taught me the music business as we were living through it,” Moten says today. “He wasn’t gonna take advantage of you. He wanted me to be in power. And I’ve practically been on my own since 1998.”

It was around then that Moten’s career would take a turn nobody could have predicted. “I was so busy,” she recalls, “and that’s when Julio Iglesias found me. I traveled 15 years as his duet partner, singing in four languages. You know, the private plane, the crazy money, the whole lifestyle. I’m glad that he found me, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be as an artist or what I wanted to sing, and it was a safe place to hide out till I could figure out, you know, my purpose. And I was getting paid to learn. He’s one of the greatest singers in music history, and he’s saying I’m one of the greatest singers in the world, and I’m learning from him. So I’m getting paid to learn and travel and see the world, and it’s just priceless.” Acknowledging that this period registers on her discography as a lull in her career, Moten notes, “Yeah, that ‘lull’ is me out there, learning from him.” 

And that, Moten makes clear, was not always a walk in the park. “It was good, but hard, because he’s very demanding and wants the impossible right away. But Dr. Lulah Hedgeman got me prepared for that. I was ready for Julio.”

“For the people who watched Hee Haw and Soul Train”
Indeed, Moten’s training also helped her ride out her transition away from the Juliocentric orbit, as she embraced life in her adopted home of Nashville with her longtime partner, bassist David Santos. Being there, she opened up to the eclecticism of her tastes, steeped as they were in the ’60s and ’70s pop culture of her childhood. Even now, those influences are apparent when she plays the Grand Ole Opry. “When I play the Opry, first of all, I tell the audience I’m from Memphis, so they don’t get confused. And then I say, ‘This particular song is for the people who watched Hee Haw and Soul Train.’” 

Moten’s post-Julio years, she says, were “when I really studied how to sing country music. I toured with Faith Hill and Tim McGraw from 2005 to 2018. Then Vince Gill called me in 2016 and said, ‘Won’t you come out on the road with me?’ So I studied the women of country music from the ’60s and ’70s, and Vince has just been my brother and friend since 2016. Then he wanted to produce this traditional country record on me called, I’ve Got You Covered, a selection of traditional country songs. We did the record at his house, and some heavy hitters play on it. He chose the songs the day of the session, and I had never heard of most of them. But he said, ‘I’m glad you don’t know them, because you will truly make them your own.’”

Listening to the album, she certainly does that, from country rockers like “Driving Nails in My Coffin” to her  haunting take on George Jones’ “Walk Through This World With Me.” Moten’s almost formal delivery, echoing the great Patsy Cline at times, continues even today when she sings with the Time Jumpers, as on their 2024 single, “Don’t Touch Me,” covering what was a minor hit for Jeannie Seely in 1966 with all due classicism. Indeed, Moten still regularly appears at the Opry with the Time Jumpers. “Last week was my 37th performance at the Opry,” she beams.

“So I decided, ‘I need TV.’”
But even the Opry, Grand and Ole as it was, had to bow down before the coronavirus — as did all of Moten’s other singing engagements in the early weeks of 2020. As it happened, that would push Moten into an invaluable crossroads on her hero’s journey, only a short time later. 

“Nobody was working,” she recalls. “Our lives changed. I was like, ‘When the world opens back up again, how are you, Wendy Moten, going to make a living? The tours you were once on don’t exist. And probably won’t exist, because we don’t know if we’re going to be in front of a live audience anymore!’ So I decided, okay, ‘I need TV.’ Okay, well, what kind of TV can I stomach? Because everything is reality TV, and I’m from the era that you don’t talk about yourself. And I was like, ‘Well, I can stomach The Voice.’”

Just committing herself to that potentially embarassing move took a leap of faith. “I knew I had to fast track this, you know, to make up for all that time I was off the scene, with no music released. Although I’d been doing duets with all kinds of icons, that wouldn’t sell albums. So I decided, ‘I’m gonna send a video. I’m not going to tell anyone.’ I thought, ‘If they receive me and say, yes, we want you to do it, then I’ll know that’s the path I need to take when the world opens back up. Otherwise, I’ve got to find another way to make a living.’” Even when The Voice said yes, it was intimidating, and Moten had to consult her  family. “I wanted to remember how afraid I was to take this leap.”

One sign of how much time had passed since her first hit was her relative anonymity among the cast and crew of The Voice. “Only one person knew me,” recalls Moten, “and that person was one of the coaches that, you know, warms you up and helps you with technique, skills, and stuff like that. That one lady was like, ‘I know who you are.’ Because she used my vocal technique when teaching her students. She had been studying my vocal technique since the ’90s!”

Added to that validation was the fact that Moten was actually doing it, leaving her a lot to celebrate as she marked a birthday during her time at The Voice. Yet during that time, she was caught up in her own world. “I didn’t even know when the finale was happening. You know, we lived in a bubble, and I didn’t know the rules of the game. The younger people on the show, they were very aware of every move that was being made. I chose to stay in the dark. 

“So it’s three weeks before the finale. I literally turn 57 years old on November 22nd, 2021 — on the show. On November 23rd, that very next day on live TV, I fall and break my elbow and two arms. I went to the emergency room that night, my right elbow was completely broken, and my left was fractured and pieces were broken in my hand. Entertainment Tonight played footage of the fall. I got three phone calls in the emergency room, and the first was from Vince Gill, and he said, ‘I just saw the fall. Where are you?’ I said, ‘I’m in emergency room.’ He’s like, ‘You have to stay on the show.’ Dude, I haven’t even seen a doctor!”

And yet she persisted. “It hadn’t even been 24 hours, and I’m leaving the hospital, going to the set with two splints on my hands and arms. I couldn’t move anything, but I never cried, and I never mentioned it. The first two nights back, they put me in some choir robes, trying to camouflage it, bling it up, you know. And I was like, ‘Man, after this week, give me my black pants back. I need my black clothes. I don’t want to be in choir robes the whole three weeks. I need my rock-and-roll clothes back.”

And so she got them, and won the runner-up prize for the 21st season of The Voice, despite her hardship. Best of all, that was proof positive that she was on the right path. Today, Moten is as indomitable as ever, and feeling free to go in any direction she sees fit. Case in point: her latest single, in which she makes TLC’s ’90s hit “Waterfalls” her own. 

Her arms and hands long since healed, Moten’s now reaping the rewards of her latest big gamble. “You know,” she reflects, “going on The Voice was one of the best moves I could have made. It was a really great decision. It was a risk that I took, and it got my career back on track without management, agent, or label.” 

UPDATE: Moten’s performance at BPACC has been changed to Friday, February 6th, due to the threat of inclement weather on her original show date. Tickets for the original date will still be honored on February 6th.