Dorinda Clark-Cole is a Grammy Award-winning gospel singer, songwriter, musician, and talk show host best known as part of the contemporary gospel phenomenon The Clark Sisters. As part of the family gospel group, Clark-Cole helped hone the inimitable Clark sound, an intricate harmonic blend that would influence scores of performers in the R&B, pop, and hip-hop realms. She released her eponymous debut solo album in 2002, which included the hit "I'm Coming Out," and has remained a fixture on the gospel charts, issuing the acclaimed efforts Take it Back (2008) and Living It (2015) and featuring on hits by contemporaries like Kirk Franklin and VaShawn Mitchell. "Great and Mighty," her first solo release in nearly a decade, appeared in 2023. 


Born Dorinda Grace Clark in 1957 in Detroit, Michigan, the singer first took to the church stage when she was five and, like sisters Jacky Clark-Chisholm, Elbertina "Twinkie" Clark, and Karen Clark-Sheard, she learned the tools of the music trade under the tutelage of her mother, church music matriarch Mattie Moss Clark. Moss Clark was a stern, demanding instructor with high expectations for her daughters, going beyond the typical "raised singing in the choir" approach of other gospel vocalists. In time, all the Sunday specials, demanding rehearsal schedules, and late-night practice sessions Moss Clark imposed on her offspring paid off, serving as a springboard for the launch of the Clark Sisters as a bona fide sensation in the early '70s. 


Clark-Cole, in particular, earned the reputation of being the "jazzy one" of the group -- a potent mezzo-soprano with a distinctive command of escalating runs, scats, and riffs. Clark-Cole's surefire rasp was featured front and center during the apex of the Clark Sisters' run in the '80s when she took the lead of the funkified "Overdose of the Holy Ghost," the B-side of the foursome's career-defining single "You Brought the Sunshine." The songbird stuck it out with the group after sister Twinkie left to pursue a solo career in the early '90s but then refocused on other ventures as the group's star dwindled in the middle of the decade. Clark-Cole took a more active role in preaching and ministering at the Clarks' longtime denomination, the Church of God in Christ, where she also held various administrative and music-related titles, both regionally and nationally. 


Following in the footsteps of Twinkie and younger sister Karen, Clark-Cole stepped out as a solo artist in 2002 with the release of her self-titled debut on Gospo Centric, an album that yielded the hits "I'm Coming Out" and the show-stopping "I'm Still Here." She issued the live follow-up, The Rose of Gospel, in 2005; her studio effort Take It Back appeared in 2008. While the singer earned acclaim and several awards for this solo material -- most notably two Stellar Awards and a Soul Train Lady of Soul statuette for her first album -- it took a 2006 reunion with the Clark Sisters and the smash comeback album Live: One Last Time, for Clark-Cole to score her first two Grammy Awards. I Survived, her fourth solo long-player, appeared in 2011 and reached number three on the Billboard gospel charts. Four years later, she soared to number two with Living It, which earned a Grammy Award nomination in the Best Gospel Album category. Inspired by a period of struggle, she released the powerful single "Great and Mighty" in 2023, and in 2024, the Clark Sisters were honored with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. ~ Andree Farias & James Christopher Monger, Rovi

Dorinda Clark-Cole

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