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Artist
Kathi McDonald
12+ albums
bluessoulblues rockrockfemale vocalist
about
Kathi McDonald (born Kathryn Marie McDonald on 25 September 1948; died 3 October 2012) was an American blues and rock singer and songwriter. As a teenager she sang with different bands around the Pacific Northwest before she was discovered by Ike Turner. She sang as an Ikette with Ike & Tina Turner and eventually succeeded Janis Joplin as the front woman of Big Brother & Holding Company. McDonald became a background vocalist for various artists, including Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, The Rolling Stones, Freddie King, and Long John Baldry. She recorded as a solo artist and fronted her own band Kathi McDonald & Friends. McDonald grew up in Mt. Vernon, Washington, where her passion for music flared early on. She began singing professionally at the tender age of 12 in clubs around the Seattle area. She had her first real brush with stardom at 19, when she was invited to audition as the lead singer of what was to become Big Brother & the Holding Company by none other than storied music promoter Chet Helms, often referred to as the Father of San Francisco’s 1967 “Summer of Love”. While McDonald hitchhiked her way down the coast from Seattle, a young Janis Joplin beat her to the audition and snagged the gig for herself. McDonald stayed in San Francisco when, on one chance night, while attending an Ike & Tina Turner concert at the fabled Fillmore West, as she remembered in a 2009 interview*: "I was about eight months pregnant. […] When they were doing 'River Deep Mountain High,' I
