I added on Rae, my husband's name, when I got married. It was there also that she met saxophone player Jason Rae, whom she eventually married in 2001 at age twenty-two. Permitted to sing on stage with the jazz band when business was slow, it was there that she discovered a different type of music that sent her on a different musical path: "I kept hearing this jazz and soul stuff and I realized I loved that music too". While at University, she began work as a hat check girl on an evening in her local jazz club. " Disappointed? I was gutted! I had no idea what to do next".Ĭorinne has often stated that she is a proud Leeds United Football Club fan.Īfter the disappointment of Helen, Rae went on to attend the University of Leeds where she studied an English Literature degree. The venture proved to be short-lived however after the bassist became pregnant and the group disbanded. Despite this, the group became the first indie act to be signed to heavy metal record label Roadrunner Records, home to acts such as Slipknot, in 1995. The group played many gigs around Leeds, including a memorable performance at Joseph's Well with Leeds-based band Swift, fronted by wildman rocker Royce Dunston. The moniker "Helen" also drew attention, albeit for not all the right reasons: "What can I say? We were 15 years old, and thought that Helen was a cheeky, indie kind of thing to do. The group raised eyebrows on several fronts in the white male-dominated world of indie music, they were an all-female group fronted by a mixed-race singer from Leeds. I wanted to be like that, at the front of something". "It was the first time I'd seen women with guitars. Rae formed an all-female indie group called Helen, which was inspired by similar acts such as Veruca Salt and L7. In her mid-teens, she became obsessed with rock legends Led Zeppelin, "I loved that band during my teens I wanted, somehow, to follow in their footsteps, and to create music of my own". Performing in church broadened Rae's musical horizons, and her love affair with making music was solidified after a local youth leader offered to buy her an electric guitar. "We didn't want to offend the regular churchgoers, now did we?" "We changed the words though", Rae states on her website. Rae later transferred to a Baptist church, where the choir would sing traditional hymns, and Primal Scream tunes. It was always my favourite part of the service, the singing". "But it wasn't gospel at all, it was just your regular Brethren church, very middle-class, where we would sing these harmonies every Sunday. She began her musical career at school where she studied classical violin before she turned her attention to singing: "I started off singing in church, I suppose, but people think it must have been a gospel church because of the whole, you know, black assumption", she says in reference to her multiracial background. 'At least if you're going to do it, get it right,' I used to shout back, 'But my dad isn't from Pakistan, he's from St Kitts so there!'" Then people from other schools would shout, ' aki' (a commonly used racist term used in the UK) to me because it was the most common racist insult of the time. "I know they were only being cute but it was over the top. She says about the situation, "My sisters and I were different and people used to say, 'Ah, aren't they cute, the little chocolate children', and 'look at their hair'". She used to be racially abused on a regular basis while growing up, even though her verbal attackers mistakenly thought she was of Iraqi origin. Rae was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, she is of mixed race origin and she is the eldest of three daughters. She has been nominated for Grammy Awards and BRIT Awards and won two MOBO Awards. The poll's predictions subsequently came true, as she became only the fourth female British act in history to have her first album debut at number one. Rae was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2006 in an annual BBC poll of music critics. Corinne Bailey Rae (born Corinne Bailey on 26 February 1979) is an British singer and songwriter who released her eponymous debut album Corinne Bailey Rae in February 2006.
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