Sterling on track

A big favourite of mine is Handsworth-born Donna Sterling, who was Steel Pulse's backing singer for five years before the birth of her second child in 2004. She's got a wonderful bubbly personality, bags of energy and of course, has a super voice and vocal range. Her grounding in the cabaret circuit gave her the experience of performing in public before she joined Steel Pulse, sharing backing vocal duties with Sylvia Tella. Tella left in 2000 and Donna carried the solo supporting role until her departure in 2004. Since then, she took some time off before returning to fine tune her voice in the Midlands' jazz and blues circuit as a vocalist with bands like Andy Hamilton & The Blue Notes, Headrocka and her brother's outfit, David Lloyd Henry's Flat Five Band. In recent months, she's again been working with Selwyn Brown from Steel Pulse on her own project, an album of already-written tracks in a variety of moods from reggae to blues to RnB to jazz, which she is hoping will come to fruition sometime next year. In the meantime, she's going to test the water with two singles around Christmas time, including a cover of Billie Holiday's God Bless The Child. In addition, she recently linked up with Steel Pulse again to help out on backing vocals for their Vote Barack song, which was released to coincide with the US presidential elections, and may help out again in the future. The future is something that Donna is looking forward to, she's feeling very excited about recent developments and is looking for the collaboration with her brother and Selwyn to take her to the next chapter of her musical journey. Keep up to date on Donna's progress here.