Martha Wash

Martha Wash is a dance music singer. She was born in San Francisco, California, on December 28 1953. Wash began her music career as a back-up singer for Sylvester. With fellow background singer

Martha Wash is a dance music singer. She was born in San Francisco, California, on December 28 1953. Wash began her music career as a back-up singer for Sylvester. With fellow background singer Izora Rhodes she was half of Two Tons O' Fun, who would later be renamed The Weather Girls. As such, they were responsible for releasing "It's Raining Men," one of the classic songs of the late-disco era. When the Weather Girls disbanded, Wash continued to lend her vocals to various dance and house music tracks. Several of them became massive pop, R&B and dance hits: Black Box's "Everybody Everybody," "I Don't Know Anybody Else" and "Strike It Up", as well as lesser-knowns such as "Fantasy", "Open Your Eyes" and "Hold On" and Seduction's "You're My One and Only (True Love)". C&C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)," hit #1 on the Hot 100 in 1991.

Wash's powerful vocals were lip synced in the videos to the above songs by C&C's Zelma Davis and Black Box's Katrine Quinol, and with the Milli Vanilli scandal still fresh in everyone's minds, Wash, also perturbed by the fact that her image had been labeled "unmarketable" because of her physical size, successfully sued to receive proper credit (and royalties) as the vocalist on all of the music. Wash's courtroom efforts spurred legislation making vocal credits mandatory on CDs and music videos, and also awarded her a recording contract with RCA which led to her debut, self-titled solo album in 1993.