1. Albertina Walker was an American gospel singer, songwriter and humanitarian.
20 Facts About Albertina Walker
1. 2.
Albertina Walker's mother was born in Houston County, Georgia, and her father in Bibb County, Georgia.
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Albertina Walker had four siblings born in Bibb County and four born in Chicago.
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Albertina Walker began singing in the youth choir at the West Point Baptist Church at an early age, and joined several Gospel groups thereafter, including the Pete Williams Singers, the Willie Webb Singers, and the Robert Anderson Singers.
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Albertina Walker was greatly influenced by Mahalia Jackson, her friend and confidante, whom Jackson took on the road when Albertina Walker was just a teenager.
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Albertina Walker was popularly referred to as the "Queen of Gospel Music", initially by such notables as the late Reverend James Cleveland and Rev Jesse L Jackson, Sr, for her outstanding achievements within the genre after the death of Mahalia Jackson in 1972.
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Albertina Walker retired The Caravans in the late 1960s, performing as a solo artist.
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Albertina Walker recorded her first solo project Put a Little Love in Your Heart in 1975.
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Albertina Walker recorded several projects together with Reverend James Cleveland.
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In 1995, Albertina Walker joined Thelma Houston, CeCe Peniston, Phoebe Snow and Lois Walden to record a gospel album in common, Good News in Hard Times, as the quintet called The Sisters of Glory.
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Albertina Walker recorded a reunion album with her group The Caravans entitled Paved the Way, which was released by Malaco Records on September 5,2006.
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Albertina Walker is featured in Who's Who in Black America as well as other volumes related to the Golden Age of Gospel Music.
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Albertina Walker received several keys to various cities and was honored at the Chicago Gospel Festival where a bench bearing her name was placed in downtown Chicago's Grant Park.
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Albertina Walker was conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters Degree by the Chicago Theological Seminary, an institution of the University of Chicago.
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Albertina Walker co-founded the Gospel Music Workshop of America along with James Cleveland.
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On her 81st birthday, Albertina Walker was admitted to a local Chicago Hospital and placed on a ventilator.
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Albertina Walker appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America and The Tavis Smiley Show among others.
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Albertina Walker was a frequent guest on the nationally syndicated BET and Word television networks, Bobby Jones Gospel, Testify and Singsation.
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Albertina Walker earned many awards and honors over her six decades of music ministry.
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Albertina Walker is a recipient of a 2005 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.