For sisters Marilyn “Kitty” Haywood and Mary Ann Stewart, entering the workforce in Chicago in the early 1960s wasn’t difficult.
Thanks to their typing classes at Parker High School on the South Side, they went to work as secretaries at what was then Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital.
“You knew how to type 80 or 90 words a minute, and you looked pretty good,” says Stewart, 79, who goes by Ann. “That was the main thrust with our parents — how to present yourself.”
But Haywood had grander dreams.
“I knew that there was something bigger for me to do,” says Haywood, 81. “I had been blessed with the gift of singing. I just didn’t know where [my career] was going to go.”
Several years later, Haywood went on to work with Chicago soul singer Minnie Riperton in the New Rotary Connection and landed a job singing a jingle for Nehi soft drinks. In time, she and Stewart, along with their late sister Vivian Haywood and niece Cynthia Harrell, became go-to vocalists for national radio and TV commercials produced by Chicago’s thriving ad agencies.
As in-demand session singers for Chicago’s booming R&B and soul scene, they worked with Curtis Mayfield on Aretha Franklin’s 1976 hit “Something He Can Feel” and then recorded their own albums as Kitty and the Haywoods.
Now living in Atlanta, the women built a reputation as one of the hardest-working musical families in Chicago. That entertainment legacy has been carried forward by their children, who include singer and “The Chi” actor Jason Weaver, music producers Laney and Tricky Stewart and music manager Mark Stewart.
“We were really good,” Haywood says of their studio work.
“They would say, ‘These girls can come in and knock it right out,’ ” Stewart says.
Part of Chicago’s music scene
Originally from Georgia, the Haywood family migrated to Chicago when the sisters were children. Their father Bishop J. M. Haywood was pastor of Christ Temple Cathedral at East 44th Street and St. Lawrence Avenue and First Progressive Church of Christ at South Wabash Avenue and East 73rd Street.
The Haywood children got their musical education in church and at home, where their mother gave them lessons at the piano.
They were asked to perform during PTA meetings at their school, Brownell Elementary.
“We were one of the only Black families at that school,” Stewart says. “It was kind of a novelty, I guess.”
By the time the sisters graduated from high school, they were pros at singing and particularly harmonizing. That got the attention of Chicago producers and arrangers.
Among those they worked with were Tom “Tom Tom 84” Washington, an arranger for Earth, Wind & Fire; James Mack, producer and arranger for the Brunswick, Chess, Capitol and Columbia record labels; Charles Stepney, a producer for Earth, Wind & Fire; and Carl Davis, a producer for Jackie Wilson and the Chi-Lites.
Haywood says she once sang backup for Quincy Jones during a performance of “Killer Joe” at the long-ago Mill Run Theatre at Golf Mill in Niles.
The women recorded songs and jingles at the Chicago Recording Company studios, Universal Recording Corporation, Paragon Studios and Streeterville studio.
Vivian Haywood’s daughter Cynthia Harrell often joined the sessions. But she missed one of their biggest gigs: recording backing vocals for Franklin’s “Sparkle” movie soundtrack at Mayfield’s Curtom Records.
“I was still in high school,” says Harrell, 64. “I caught the German measles the night before.”
Queens of commercials
The singers say they especially enjoyed recording jingles in Chicago over a 25-year span. They worked for ad agencies including the Leo Burnett Company, Foote, Cone & Belding, Needham, Harper & Steers and the Black-owned Burrell Communications. They worked for accounts that included Amoco, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Crest and United Airlines.
In the early 1990s, Harrell sang in Gatorade’s popular “Be Like Mike” commercials that featured Michael Jordan. Harrell remembers seeing him in the recording studio.
“He did get a chance to hear that opening line that I sang,” says Harrell, who also can be heard on theme songs for the video games “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night” and “Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.”
Getting to be part of that with Jordan, she says, “was really special.”
The women say they’d get bookings because they could sing in traditionally Black styles and also provide what ad agencies called a “general market” sound.
That versatility impressed fellow jingle singer Jeff Morrow.
“I was just amazed watching them,” says Morrow, 68, of Indianapolis, who has voiced Tony the Tiger for Frosted Flakes commercials and the Dig ‘em frog for Honey Smacks ads.
The pay for doing jingles, including residuals, was good enough that Morrow and the women were able to quit their day jobs.
“There were maybe 25 or 30 singers in Chicago that did everything,” Morrow says. “We had to walk in and, in an hour, record [a song] and be done with it.”
The next generation
As Kitty and the Haywoods, the women recorded two albums of their own: “Love Shock,” produced by the Ohio Players and released in 1977 on Mercury Records, and “Excuse Me, I’ve Got A Life To Catch,” released in 1981 on Capitol Records.
Neither made much of a mark commercially after not getting much promotion from the labels, according to the singers.
“We weren’t a priority,” says Stewart, who also led the all-female choir The Annettes, for more than 20 years.
Once the jingles business dried up, Stewart and Haywood focused on helping their children succeed in the entertainment industry.
Weaver portrayed Michael Jackson in the “The Jacksons: An American Dream” TV miniseries and provided the singing voice for Simba in “The Lion King” movie.
Stewart’s son Laney Stewart has worked with Usher and K-Ci & JoJo, and her son Tricky Stewart won a Grammy for producing Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul.”
“Success is not necessarily, in my opinion, being able to sell millions upon millions of records,” says Weaver, 44, who lives in Atlanta. “What my mother and my aunts have is a rich legacy — something that they can really be proud of. ... It was up to us to take it to the next level. And that’s what we’ve been able to do.”
