Kim Tolliver

Dorothy Kimberly Tolliver, singer: born Lebanon, Tennessee 21 June 1937; three times married (two sons); died Cleveland, Ohio 6 June 2007.

Kim Tolliver's strong, gutsy performances on tracks like "I Don't Know What Foot to Dance On", "I'll Try to Do Better" and "Standing Room Only" made her a firm favourite of the Northern Soul scene in the mid-Seventies. While she never found major chart success, her recording career spanned 15 years and went from Deep Soul in the Sixties to more disco- and dance-flavoured recordings in the Eighties.

Born Dorothy Kimberly Tolliver in Lebanon, Tennessee, she sang gospel in church in her teens and started performing in bars and clubs in the late Fifties after she moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she became known for her dramatic interpretations of blues and soul standards. Her emotional, intense style of singing was at least partly the result of her troubled personal life. Her first husband, the blues singer Rex Robinson, died in a car crash, and she subsequently married Leroy Grafrenreed, who owned a barbershop in Cleveland.

Tolliver eventually made her recording début in 1967 and released the slow burner "In Return for Your Love". She then cut four singles - "I'll Try to Do Better", "Tuesday's Child", "Let Them Talk" and "Driving Me into the Arms of a Stranger" - for Rojac Records, which got her noticed as far as Australia and she performed there and in New Zealand for several months.

On her return to the United States, she divorced Grafrenreed and married the producer and songwriter Fred Briggs. He helped her record the singles "I Caught You", "Got Myself Together" and "How Long Can I Keep Holding On", the last released under the name Big Ella. In 1972, she made her first album, Passing Clouds, as Kimberly Briggs, and the following year followed it up with Come and Get Me - I'm Ready, as Kim Tolliver again.

Originally issued in 1975 on the Castro label, the infectious "I Don't Know What Foot to Dance On" introduced her to the Northern Soul audience who eagerly unearthed her previous singles, making them highly collectable in the process. Her new UK fans also bought the remake of "Let Them Talk" as well as "Where Were You" and the dancefloor filler "Party Lights", issued in 1982, but, after her separation from Briggs, Tolliver recorded less and less and eventually gave up performing altogether.

Pierre Perrone