Brown probably recognized a great bandleader and frontperson when he saw one. Onstage, “Mama” Maggie Ingram can lead her rhythmic nine-piece Ingramettes with a nod or an arched eyebrow, tossing off down-home monologues one minute, leading extended call-and-responses for Jesus the next. Then, time will stop, and with her faith hanging on every note, the tall, regal lady with the chiseled profile will deliver a vocal testimony that creates shivers in saved and sinner alike.
Her group keeps up an active performance schedule of mostly regional church programs, a community focus that has made them one of Virginia’s best-kept secrets. Ingram doesn’t mind being a somewhat obscure talent, because success has never been a priority. “Most of our songs have a message,” she says. “We’re going to leave a message with you.”
Mama recently received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Gospel Music Workshop of America, but this music is still a family affair. Her keyboardist son Lucious leads the Ingramettes’ tight and intuitive band, and daughter Almeta Ingram Miller choreographs a shimmying trio of background singers (including granddaughter Cheryl Maroney-Beaver), while acting as onstage foil to her mother. “I’m 55,” Almeta Miller says. “I’ve been singing with the band for 50 years. When other little children were outside playing marbles, we were inside in a circle with her beating a stick, keeping time. She taught each one of us our voices. She taught me soprano, my sister [Christine] alto, the boys [Lucious, Tommy] tenor, and even my oldest brother [John] sang bass. This woman, who was never formally trained in music, can play in every key of the piano. It still amazes me … she wrote almost all of our music.”
I ask Maggie Ingram where it comes from.
“It comes from God, baby.”
She was born Maggie Lee Dixon in Coffee County, Georgia, on Independence Day, 1930, one of six children to Reason and Pauline Dixon. No one else in the family was musically inclined, but she taught herself piano and traces many of her melodies to early days in the fields. “Sharecropping, working in the fields for the Mullholland plantation, you have to sing or do nothing. You feel like the world is coming to an end. So I was given the gift to sing. I got grown, I got married, I had children … but the song comes from working in the cornfields.”
Latest Comments
Maine Performance in 2008
Posted by Sam and Sharon Dunaway January 15, 2012 20:55:48
Maggie Ingram and the Ingramettes
Posted by Brenda Bethel Wimberly August 24, 2011 09:49:02
Trying to be able to communicate with Ms Maggie and Family
Posted by Brenda Bethel wimberly August 24, 2011 09:39:14