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Deniece Williams Collection

Fourteen tracks from a singer with a four-octave range who came up singing behind Stevie Wonder and then made one of the most weightless records in soul.

Deniece Williams

Deniece Williams spent her apprenticeship in Wonderlove, Stevie Wonder's backing group, which is where she learned to sing in the extreme upper part of a range most people cannot reach at all. She then went to Chicago and made her debut with Charles Stepney and Maurice White producing, which is about as good a start as anyone has had.

Her signature is that impossibly high, light tone — and, crucially, her refusal to use it for display. She sings up there conversationally, which is technically extraordinary and emotionally disarming.

The career then split in two: a run of pop hits including one of the biggest American singles of the eighties, and a substantial second life as a gospel artist that has won her multiple Grammys.

What to listen for

"Free" is the essential track and one of the most distinctive records of the seventies. Charles Stepney's arrangement is the reason it floats — the backing vocals are voiced like a string section, and the whole thing seems to have no floor.

"Silly" is the one soul listeners love most, and it has been covered repeatedly without anyone improving on it.

"Black Butterfly" is the most serious piece of writing here — a song about emancipation and flight, and one of the great underappreciated soul ballads.

"Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" with Johnny Mathis went to number one, and the pairing of two very light voices is what makes it work.

"It's Gonna Take a Miracle" is the Royalettes cover and the record that reached the widest audience.

"It's Your Conscience" and "They Say" are the deep cuts, and "Love's Holiday" is the Skip Scarborough song she takes back from Earth, Wind & Fire.

"Someday We'll All Be Free" and "God Is Amazing" are the gospel selections.

Go deeper

This Is Niecy (1976) is the essential album and the Charles Stepney production; Song Bird (1977) is the follow-up.

For the wider world of high-voiced soul singers who sang quietly rather than loudly: Minnie Riperton — another Stepney collaborator — and Syreeta Wright, who also came through Stevie Wonder's orbit.

Listening note: the extraordinary thing is not the range but the refusal to display it. She sings in the very top of her register conversationally, as though it costs nothing, and the arrangements around her are voiced so that nothing anchors the sound to a floor. That combination is why these records still seem to hover.

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