Creativity Quote by Della Reese

Name-dropping Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, and Barry White isn’t nostalgia bait here; it’s a power move. Della Reese is staking a claim to a very specific sonic lineage: the gospel-rooted, R&B-polished tradition where the “background” isn’t decorative, it’s structural. Those singers carried the emotional architecture of American pop for decades, often without top billing. By calling them out as raw material for a choir, Reese flips the hierarchy. She’s saying the thing you treat as supporting texture is the engine.

The intent is practical and cultural at once. Practically, she’s describing a method: recruit the most battle-tested voices in the business - people who can blend on instinct, hit harmonic changes clean, and sell feeling without stealing focus. Culturally, she’s quietly correcting the record about labor and authorship in music. Background singers, especially Black women, were frequently the uncredited muscle behind iconic records. Reese doesn’t romanticize them; she promotes them, using their resumes as proof of authority.

Context matters: Reese came up through gospel and jazz circuits where a choir is both a sound and a community. “I built a choir around that” reads like leadership, not ego - an artist assembling a collective instrument from undervalued experts. It’s also a sly statement about continuity: these voices already shaped the soundtrack of modern America; Reese just gave them the center of the stage.