Zulema - R.S.V.P. (2024) Hi-Res

American soul/R&B singer-songwriter and pianist Zulema Cusseaux had more than enough talent to achieve stardom and success in the 70s. Over the course of six albums, mostly comprising her own material, she proved herself an exceptional keyboard player, vocalist and composer. But despite the efforts of three labels, Zulema (she used a mononym throughout her career) only grazed the middle reaches of Billboard’s R&B charts a handful of times as a solo artist. And by the time of her premature death in September 2013, she’d spent decades out of the spotlight and endured straitened circumstances and personal problems.

Florida-born Zulema’s first break at a national level was as part of Faith, Hope And Charity, with whom she enjoyed two 1970 hits on the US R&B chart, So Much Love (No 14) and Baby Don’t Take Your Love (No 36), neither written by her. Though she would work with her group-mates Brenda Hilliard and Al Bailey again, she left the trio after one album. When she re-emerged with her self-titled Sussex Records solo debut in 1972, the full breadth of her creativity was revealed, including accomplished piano-playing and polished songwriting tackling subjects from slavery (American Fruit, African Roots) to single motherhood (This Child Of Mine). Her gospel-tinged voice was so good that, shorn of her additional talents, she could still have been a star. That year, she appeared on US TV programme Soul! and the surviving footage is ample proof of her charismatic and compelling presence. Some ground was lost with her second album, Ms Z (Sussex, 1973) – Zulema would later tell Blues & Soul journalist, David Nathan, that the producer had wrested control from her. The LP included some by-rote covers (Love Train) and, inexplicably, Zulema ceded the piano stool to a session player throughout.

Then, however, came the next, most promising phase of her career. She signed to RCA in the mid-70s, issuing another self-titled album in 1975 that peaked at US R&B No 48. It was at this time that Nathan became one of her champions in the press as well as a friend. “I moved to New York in 1975,” he tells RC, “and one of my first projects was her first RCA album. Elliot Horne, an old-school New York publicist, said he wanted to set up something with an artist he’d just signed and that’s how I met her – it was an in-person interview in March 1975 in RCA’s office on Avenue of the Americas. She was there with her then-husband and manager, Joe Gray, and it was really delightful. She was really excited about doing an interview with a British music magazine. She was very warm and friendly and really happy to be with a major label. She saw there was an opportunity to become better known. And I heard the album and absolutely loved it. We hit it off. She was a really charming, fun, light person. Light, but deep in terms of her writing and her musical skills.” Zulema eventually made the cover of Blues & Soul and Nathan would write about her at several junctures. He would also socialise with her in her apartment on Riverside Drive.
Though Zulema appeared on Soul Train in 1975, performing the dazzling Standing In The Back Row Of Your Heart, Nathan thinks it’s possible that her artistic selling-point – a black woman who sat at the keyboards and played her original material – was both an asset and a complicating factor in her promotion. Reference points for such a performer were few. He emphasises that Zulema’s failure to garner the kind of success commensurate with her talents wasn’t the oft-heard story of record label inadequacy. “RCA really did get behind her, honestly,” he says. “It wasn’t, ‘Let’s just see what we can do with her’ – they were clear from the beginning that she could be a major recording artist. They did their best, they really did.”

RSVP (sometimes considered Zulema’s peak) and Suddenly There Was You, followed in 1975 and 1976, but as the hits failed to materialise, Zulema and RCA parted ways. She sought a change of direction for 1978’s Z-Licious, half a disco album, half ballads, produced by Van McCoy, whose stock had risen since his hit, The Hustle. Though the album won Zulema another R&B chart appearance, it would be her final solo excursion. The following year, Aretha Franklin recorded Zulema’s Half A Love for her Atlantic album, La Diva, also produced by McCoy. “It was one of her triumphs!” recalls Nathan. “She was so happy about it. Being on an Aretha Franklin album was a real high point – and getting to meet her and be on the session. It was a big deal for her.”
Perhaps the decision to be managed by her husband and occasional co-writer, Joe Gray, was ill-advised. “I think it was challenging,” concedes Nathan, “and a source of conflict. I’m trying to think of any relationship like that that’s ever worked. You’re basically with someone all the time.” Zulema and Gray would eventually part ways, possibly at some point in the 80s.

Next came some stage work and a duo album (Watcha Gonna Do, 1982), after which – nothing. Nathan lost touch with her and by the time he sought her out to let her know he was producing an anthology of her RCA songs (The Best Of Zulema – The RCA Years, Ichiban, 1996), she was working at a grocery checkout and living with a domineering man.

Zulema’s hardest times were in the 2000s, when she was twice arrested on drugs-related charges. But, Nathan confides, by the time of her 2013 death, this unjustly overlooked, gifted woman had found peace, overcome her problems and become the minister of music at her local church, back where she’d started life – in Tampa, Florida.

“It would have been amazing to talk to her again,” he adds, “but it didn’t work out that way. I had such massive respect for her.”