Raynoma Mayberry
The Cute-Teens (Detroit)
Personnel :
Raynoma Mayberry
Alice Mayberry
Marlene Nero
Mamie?
Discography :
1959 - When My Teenage Days Are Over / From This Day Forward (Aladdin 3458)
Biography :
Raynoma was born to Lucille and Ashby Mayberry and raised in Black
Bottom, a Detroit ghetto, until her father’s income as a janitor at
Cadillac’s headquarters enabled them to move to a better neighbourhood.
At Cass technical school she played the viola in the school symphony
orchestra. She also played the piano and the harp, studied theory,
composition, harmony and arrangement, and sang in school and church
choirs. Her first husband, Charles Liles, was a saxophonist; they
married in 1955 and had a son, Cliff, divorcing after two years
together.
She
was performing with her sister Alice as a singing duo called Alice and
Ray and it was after winning a talent contest at the Twenty Grand club
in Detroit that they were introduced to Berry Gordy. He granted them an
audition at his house. Berry Gordy was impressed by her perfect pitch
and by her suggestions for improving musical arrangements, devising
introductions and fleshing out harmonies. She and her sister became the
nucleus of a group called the Teen Queens, later the Cute-Teens with
Marlene Nero and an old flame of Berrys called Mamie,
Raynoma Mayberry & Berry Gordy
Berry
Gordy produced a single, From This Day Forward, leased to the Aladdin
label in 1958. When Gordy released the first record on his Tamla label,
Marv Johnson’s Come to Me, in the early weeks of 1959, there was a
credit for the Rayber Voices, a backing choir that Raynoma had assembled
and which would be heard on several early Motown records. After the
birth of their child, Kerry, and his divorce from his previous wife was
final, Ray and Berry Gordy were married.
Songs :
When My Teenage Days Are Over From This Day Forward