Meet Aretha Scruggs

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aretha Scruggs.

Aretha, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started out in a family gospel group called the Scruggs Sisters. My three sisters and I were 2-4 years old with my twin sister and I in the middle. My parents played for us, with mom on the piano and our dad on the bass or saxophone. Together we sang sometimes 2-3 times a week at different churches, community events, or sporting events. Around middle school, we started opening for gospel artists such as Yolanda Adams, Vickie Winans and other of our favorite artists we grew up listening to. We even got a chance to sing for Rosa Parks 80th birthday. It was after high school that I think all four of my sisters and I left singing behind and went to pursue something else. I attended UCLA as a pre-med student and was set to become an ostepathic doctor with my twin sister to eventually open up our own medical practice. Low and behold though, it was at UCLA that no matter how much we tried to hide that we even sang, somehow people found out, and one event led to another and another, and as I call it, God really showed the path that I was meant to be on. It was after singing with our church choir our senior year for an event called the Colors of Christmas, that my twin sister and I really started this professional journey of music. It was the first year we could sing with our church choir, and we were scheduled to sing all weekend at a weekend engagement behind the four artists they had performing for that year-Peabo Bryson, Irene Cara, and Christopher Cross and I can’t remember the other artist. Well, Irene Cara got sick the week of the show and they replaced her with Natalie Cole. A fellow worship leader at the church we attended used to be a regular background singer for Natalie Cole years prior, so they gave her the task of choosing two singers along with herself to sing background for the two songs Natalie Cole would be singing that weekend.

Fatefully, she chose my twin sister and I to sing alto and tenor, to her soprano voice and we learned two of Natalie’s songs in two nights and our audition was at soundcheck the day of the show. Petrified and still a little excited, we sang for her then and the following two nights, and we met her backstage after the fist show and she just thought we were so cute. We had just graduated from UCLA and were all of 23 years old, and she said we looked just like her own twin sisters Timolin and Casey. We told her about our family how we grew singing with our family, and actually, her CD “unforgettable” was the first non-Christian Cd I was able to purchase purchase with my own money when we were in our early years of high school. So, to be standing there with her that night was a dream we had not ever dreamed was possible for two “church-babies” from a small suburb like Moreno Valley, CA. Well, she said she hoped to work with us in the future, but we thought that was just small talk to be nice. We said our goodbyes that night not knowing what would happen. We were unemployed after graduation and not sure where our future lied next. Seven months later, though, Natalie’s musical directress called us and said she would love for us to join her team. After an ecstatic yes, We had one month to learn 50 songs, followed by a week of rehearsals, the first week in May.

By June we started touring with her through Japan, then Australia, New Zealand and all over the United States. For almost three years, we were under her tutelage which soon became the training ground for excellence that has now spanned 15 years. From there, I went on to sing as a touring background singer for Christian Aguilera, Anita Baker, and Chaka Khan. With two of my sisters, we got to work for awards shows like the BET Celebration of Gospel and BET Awards for ten years, where we got to sing for amazing singers like Whitney Houston, Patti Labelle, Lionel Richie, and gospel greats Fred Hammond, Yolanda Adams, Kirk Franklin, Donnie McClurklin and Tye Tribbett. Today, I am being called for more studio sessions for film and TV, for such recent shows as “Euphoria” “Harriet Tubman” and so many others. So, my start with Natalie Cole was a God-send. Never would I have imagined my life would have been the adventure it has been. I have been able to travel now to 18 countries and all over the United States singing and it all started in the church with my family. I am so privileged to say that is where I remain to this day.

In addition to singing though, most people would never know, I am also a certified Vocal Instructor. This part of my journey also started with Ms. Natalie Cole. My twin sister and I had spent our first year of touring as seasoned singers, but very were still very new to touring. The demand on our natural voices was so much that we just could not keep up. When we came back off of that first trip with Natalie in Japan, the musical directress suggested we go see Natalie’s Vocal coach. So, we pulled together our funds and scheduled an hour with him to share and we got some tips on how to keep progressing with the demand touring put on our voices. At the end, the coach showed us so much favor, he said I want you all to keep studying with me, let me talk to Natalie for you. Next thing I know, he called and said Natalie agreed to pay for you both to study with me two times a week, for two half hours a week. OMG! What?! We took it seriously and showed up everyday to our lessons-on time and prepared as we could and as long as we attended Natalie supported. We ended up studying for six months with him and two other coaches within their vocal coaching network. We were so involved the coach suggested we get certified and start teaching with their company. So, that started an amazing journey of teaching others that I have been on since then-about 14 years. It has been the greatest joy and need of my life and my own understanding of the voice as I have helped countless individuals on the journey to finding their own voice.

As this coach coupled with Natalie Cole helped me to find my own voice as a background singer, but also as an artist, it is my joy to be able to help people do the same thing. I teach out of my own private studio in Pasadena, CA, but am also on staff as a “Commercial Voice” instructor at Azusa Pacific University. So, I am a singing professor. In this time, I also stopped to get a Masters of Arts degree in Cross Cultural studies with an emphasis in Ethnomusicology and Global Worship from Fuller Theological Seminary. So, my expertise is in the voice/music, Culture and theology. So, my life has been an amazing adventure. If I am not singing as a supporting, background vocalist or teaching my classes as a professor, I am making my own music as a jazz-gospel artist. I have an EP I released this past April 2019 called “Not of This World” that you can find on all digital platforms. It is a collection of all the things I love- jazz, gospel and some other things my band and I created. I am in the process of working on my next project which will be a full jazz album as an ode to the woman who has meant so much to my career: Natalie Cole. I am collecting the music, producer, arrangers and musicians I want to work with now.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
No this has in no way been a smooth road.

I think the main struggle for me was finding and sticking to my own path. As a twin, I have loved all things related to being a twin. I was born with my best friend. So, we did everything together. As we got older and found out we had different interests and/or life was just playing out different for us, it meant I was left to decide and seek my own path. As much as I hated the process of finding my own path, it is where I have found my happy place. I was so content to live life with someone else, and going along with someone else’s plan, but life just led my sister and I down different ways. So, those stumbles and complete feelings of paralysis due to anxiety and fear sometimes, has made my journey by myself very difficult. It is only because of some of my greatest cheerleaders found in my mom, and my friends and sisters that I have even been able to take some of the risks that have been necessary to keep going when life and my career took a stand still.

With the nature of the music industry, having to find sideline work that would sustain me as I waited for work in music and/or built the strength to step out on my own, has also been a part of the struggle as I had to find what made me tick outside of music. In the second half of my career, I have really enjoyed the process of finding things that work such as being a Zumba instructor, substituting in schools and building my vocal coaching business. It is through those struggles that I have become a master at recognizing when my students are operating out of fear or leaning on negative or positive limits other people have put on them. It is also how I have become a resource for my friends and students to find things to sustain them as they go through the process of surviving and hopefully thriving as they find and maintain their own selves on this road of the arts.

I think that would be another struggle for me would be the struggle of the up and down nature of being in this business of anything dealing with the arts. Man! You can be high, living on the highest high with the amazing opportunities that happen in this industry one day, and it might be as soon as that gig is over-the next day, that you are in the season of experiencing your lowest lows. This journey is not for the faint of heart at all! I have lived some amazing experiences, let me tell you. In my travels alone to the beautiful sites of each country I visited, the people, I’ve met, the stories I’ve heard and the experiences I have experienced. There is nothing like the life I have been blessed to live-OMG! But as soon as that gig ends, whether you were let go or it was a natural closing of the show, it can be hard at times to figure out how to get back on your feet financially, to adapt back to life-if I was touring alot in the last season, or just to figure out the next steps in my career. What has helped me with this has definitely been the strong family I have come from and the “framily” (friends and family) I have all over the world now, but also my faith. My faith in God tells me that this is only a season, that the best is STILL yet to come, and that I was called and have purpose in living and being in this industry. All of these have sustained me. I would tell anyone, unless you KNOW this is your purpose and your calling to be in this industry, go find what you are really made to do. This is not just for fun. You have to know this is what you were called to do and I know this is my calling in life. I have a three year old daughter and everyone is wondering if I am already teaching her how to sing and training her up to be the next great voice. My answer is no! I want her to enjoy her childhood for a while. As she starts exhibiting different things that she has a natural skill for, then I will start to push her slowly in that direction to see if this might be what she was made and created to be and walk in -her own calling. I will not force her to be in music in anyway, because I know how hard this life can be. If this is what she feels like God is leading and pushing her towards as she gets older, then I will help her in anyway I can to do it with excellence.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
As a Vocal Coach, I specialize in helping students find their own voice. Depending upon what leg of the journey they might be in- as a novice, as a professional, no matter what, I teach that we are all on the journey to finding and maintaining OUR own voice at its optimal level. What allows it to operate at its greatest mastery or skill? What allows it to perform at its greatest potential? We talk about vocal care, vocal strengthening, vocal health, and work on song dissection, to really look at what the student is doing in their line of work and how can we get them to the place where they can do that with greater ease continuously with little strain and ease. Most of my students come to me for help with belting and with singing styles of various African American music genres, but I am most proud when students come back to me with stories of how they are learning more about themselves as an individual, as an artist and how they have come to learn their own instrument better. It is so easy in this industry to sound like someone else and to completely mimic someone else’s sound, even if you didn’t mean to put yourself into that box. So, to know that students are learning how to use their OWN instrument, that is what makes me most excited. I think this is what sets me apart. I am interested in the whole person, not just trying to get them to hit a note they have not been able to hit on their own. There are so many lies we believe about ourselves on the process of becoming an artist, so really finding those lies and speaking truth to them in our lessons is one thing that I pride myself on being able to address in my lessons-because we are whole human beings, not just singing, or speaking, or performing human beings. I guess this goes back to my desire to go into medicine and specifically osteopathic medicine where doctors are trained to look at the whole human in front of them-the total person.

As an artist, I specialize in what I call the intersection between jazz and gospel music: the sacred and non-sacred. I can lead a congregation in worship, as well as float on the clouds in an improvisational moment with my jazz quartet. Both of those things might be a rub for those in the church I grew up in or the jazz circles I find myself in sometimes, but that is ok with me. The similarities of both genres is the open space that is created in the music to just create. In worship, they are created through maybe a repeated refrain that repeats again and again to remind the singer or congregation to think and reflect on the goodness of God in their hard or difficult time they might be living through at the moment. In each repeated truth about the goodness of God in the repeated refrain of for example “He’s Able”, the singer gets a little deeper into the realization of that truth, each time the phrase is repeated in the song. So that, the repeated phrase almost becomes like a prayer as st. Augustine states “he who sings prays twice”. Each time the words take on a greater knowledge and hope that in the difficulty I am facing today “He is able”.

In jazz, the first A section is introduced to familiarize the audience with the familiar tune, but as the song really gets underway, the final section of the song allows for a space to create something in the moment that can never be created again. The singer, coupled with the excellent skill of the pianist, the saxophonist, guitarist, bassist and drummer, all have a chance in that moment to come together and masterfully play together, to create a masterpiece. And sometimes in various degrees of partnering , whether its the singer and the drummer together or the bass by themselves, the freedom to create leaves a space for a masterpiece to be created. Even if we have played the song together 30 times, it is the beauty of jazz, that will allow the artists involved to say something different; to create beautifully, a masterpiece for that crowd. These are all the things I absolutely love about jazz and gospel and about the creative arts. I am an artist and love to be apart of the creative process that is music. I am not much of an entertainer, I am more so interested in the communicating aspect of the arts and the creativity it allows me the privilege of being a part of.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
My parents Wanda and Melvin are the ones who deserve the greatest credit in my success. Not only did they teach me how to sharpen the tool of my voice to be able to create, but they continue in that process to teach me how to be a master at all that I do. They taught me to do all that I can to serve God and to serve others with excellence and from a young age taught me how to be a master at picking out my part -soprano or alto out of any harmony line. That lesson I still draw on in the different jobs I get hired to do. It is in the skill of harmonizing and doing things in excellence that I am put in the place to serve others on the jobs that I get hired to do. Whether I am there to be a light, to listen, to bring joy, to love on people. Whichever it is, I am thankful always to my parents who believed in my sisters and I from such a young age. Everything that I do today, even in being the masterful teacher that I am, I learned from my parents. They were always the worship Pastors at the church we attended growing up. So, I saw from an early age how to lead in love and excellence and together, as a family or as a community. So, I love to this day singing in community with others, but especially my family.

My sisters right along with them have been my greatest supporters and friends. From my bosom buddy found in my “wombmate” my twin sister Alayna, who has been able to travel physically with me as a touring background singer and/or adventure with me in all of the towns we toured through all over the world, she is my best friend and my greatest support whom I can share all of my life with; to my oldest sister Toni, who has shown me from the age of 4 years old what it is to be masterful at the craft of singing-she is the best singer I know and have known my whole life-, to being the caring protective big sister and aunty that she has become to my and all of me and my sisters kids; to my younger sister Dee Dee who has been the silent glue to all we do as a family-whether singing or venturing out together as a family, she is loyalty and support wrapped up in one. So, my sisters are everything to me and how I have been able to thrive even with being a mommy of my beautiful daughter Imani in this industry.

Lastly, My daughter Imani deserves credit for where I am in my career right now. Her addition to my life, though unexpected has been such a light in my last three years. Her mere presence has brought so much joy to my life, but she has also forced me to ask real questions about what I want and need to be doing with my life at this point in my life. Because I have limited time now, I can weigh the jobs I get contracted to do against the time it would take away from intentionally spending time with her. I can choose what I will do as I purposefully want to walk in purpose to model for my daughter what it means to live a life of purpose.Not always driven by the paycheck, I want my daughter to know that you can be a mommy and intentionally pour into the next generation as well as live a life thriving and enjoying what you have been called and love to do. She is my everything and I am so overjoyed I get to live this life with her. She is able to travel with me sometimes to teach master classes in other states and countries and with it I am able to expose her to different cultures and people. I hope that all of these experiences enhance how she sees the world. Her mere presence in my life allows me to see life from the lens of now a three years old and allows me to ask how do I want to be a part of changing it to make it better for her and the generations that will come after her.

And of course, I want to thank Natalie Cole, Christina Aguilera, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan and so many other artists, producers, arrangers, BET, film and TV composers and creators, my vocal coaches, fellow background singers, and musicians, my own vocal students and college students, pastors, teachers, aunties, uncles, friends, framily, therapists, and even ex-boyfriends who have really been a part of my growth over the last 15 years. Wow! I have been through so much, but I can say that I have led an amazing life because of these people who have believed in me, pushed me, or been a part of the process that has been coming to a greater understanding of who I am and what I am meant to do. I could not have done it without the heartache and the pain, but also the great opportunities that have opened the way along the journey. What a journey. So much more to do and see, but up to now-what a ride!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.arethascruggs.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @arethascruggsmusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aretha.scruggs.7
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/aretha-scruggs-vocal-studio-pasadena?osq=aretha+scruggs

Image Credit:
Meztli Zambrano: photographer

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