If this were an ideal world, Juliet King would be traveling through Europe and America 10 months of the year, living the life of a concert singer. God knows she is well-equipped for performing as a professional. King, a soprano who has worked as a soloist in Joliet churches for the past 35 years, has a voice that most singers would envy.
King is a multifaceted performer, with an ability to sing anything from German lieders to African-American spirituals. Her voice is a powerful yet flexible instrument, with a pronounced vibrato and a range of four octaves. At its loudest, it can drown out a 50-person choir. At its softest, it can be mistaken for an expertly played flute or a clarinet.
”She has a sound with a lot of feeling and emotion,” said Nick Thomas, the musical director at the Cathedral of St. Raymond in Joliet, where King has done most of her performing for the past five years.
”Juliet`s voice is clear, warm and passionate,” said her music teacher, Gisela Goettling. ”It`s something natural, a gift.”
And yet, the sixtysomething King, a Joliet resident who is the mother of 10 children, rarely gets the chance to sing in public. On Oct. 18, she sang at the First Baptist Church in Dixon, Ill., and on Nov. 1, she was the soloist with a 50-person choir and a 15-piece chamber orchestra at the Cathedral of St. Raymond. That was King`s musical agenda as a soloist for the second half of 1992.
Instead of performing in the best concert halls in the country, King spends the majority of her time at the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, where she works as a food service supervisor.
In the past, however, King has conquered Europe with her voice. From 1972 to 1978, she performed at London`s famed Westminster Abbey and in concert halls in Switzerland and Sweden. She also appeared on tours throughout West Germany for the U.S. Armed Services.
King so impressed audiences in Europe that in 1975 she was offered a chance to record an album of American spirituals in Sweden. The album, recorded in one day and titled ”Glory Hallelujah,” features arrangements for songs by composers as varied as Charles Ives and Hall Johnson.
Earlier this year, King was prepared to travel to Europe again. In September 1991, representatives of the Svenska Mission Sforbundet in Stockholm invited King to perform several concerts there during a three-week tour to celebrate the holy season in April.
King accepted the offer and immediately went to work with Goettling practicing songs that she had never performed before-a collection of music by Brahms, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi and Faure, in addition to spirituals. But on the day King was going to buy her ticket to Sweden, she was told by representatives of the Svenska Mission that her trip was postponed for economic reasons.
King was disappointed. She had been practicing for the tour for almost a year. Still, she wanted a chance to perform the songs she had practiced, so she organized the aforementioned Nov. 1 recital at the Cathedral of St. Raymond. In addition to performing, she also raised $3,000 for sheet music for the choir and orchestra and costumes for the choir.
”I told Nick and the choir that I wanted to sing with an orchestra and a choir, and they said fine, but we don`t have the money to put on the program,” King recalled. ”So I called my 10 children and asked if they would give me $100 apiece, and they said yes. That gave me incentive. If my family would help me, then I could raise money to put on the concert.”
The rest of the money was raised after King drafted a letter to St. Raymond parishioners requesting money for the performance. Her techniques were effective-it took only two months to raise the money.
”I just had to sing with an orchestra,” said King, explaining her efforts. ”If you want to do something, you just have to get busy and work at it.”
Work with a choir and orchestra obviously energizes King, who appreciates singing classical and operatic pieces but mostly enjoys performing spirituals. Thomas said that the quiet, retiring King becomes a different person when she is in front of an audience.
”She`s a great showman,” he said. ”When she gets into the spirituals, she`ll have the audience on their feet.”
”Before I go out on stage, I sometimes feel like I`m going to have a heart attack,” King said, ”but once I open my mouth, I get a tremendous feeling of satisfaction.”
For the past 14 years, Juliet King has gotten out of bed at 4 a.m. on weekdays and headed to Stateville where she works as one of the prison`s 31 food service supervisors.
She oversees 14 prisoners in preparing three meals a day for more than 200 inmates in Stateville`s minimum security wing. Although she doesn`t directly handle the food, King is ultimately responsible for deciding what will be served to the prisoners each day. She got the job because she had received training as a caterer in the 1950s.
”The prisoners just love Juliet, because she`s one of the sweetest people around,” said King`s supervisor, Fannie Morrison. ”And I`ll just hate it when she retires, because she so responsible.”
Some may think the position unrewarding for an artist like King, but she likes the job because it pays well and because it allows her to be in touch with less fortunate people.
”I have a good relationship with the prisoners,” said King. ”They can be slothful sometimes, but I tell them to do their jobs and we`ll get along fine. I`ve learned to love them. Whatever I know I try to teach the prisoners. I tell them when you leave here, you can get a job with your skills in food preparation. And I`ve learned a lot from the prisoners, too. They`ve come from all walks of life, from homeless families to big businesses.”
King`s coworkers said most of the inmates are excited about her other life as a concert singer. ”The prisoners made sure that their family members bought tickets for her recital (at the Cathedral of St. Raymond),” Morrison said. ”They say `Mama King is singing, so you be sure to buy a ticket.` ”
King began working at Stateville after she returned from a tour of Brazil in 1978. Her late husband, Charles, had suffered a stroke and had lost a leg in a construction accident. ”It was my responsibility to take care of him,” King said. ”I had an opportunity to travel more, but I needed to earn money.”
Due to her off-again-on-again musical career, King has had to do her share of menial labor to help support her family. ”I worked in anybody`s house as a maid or a scrubwoman,” King said. ”I had to work even when my husband was healthy. With construction workers, when it rains, there`s no food. Then you have all kinds of problems. But when I had a chance to sing, I`d put on the best thing that I had-which wasn`t much-and drop the job I was working on and perform.”
The various jobs have helped pay for music lessons that King has continually taken for 35 years. She currently pays $60 an hour for once-a-week voice lessons with Goettling in the Fine Arts Building in downtown Chicago.
King has also suffered financially from various ailments that she and her family have endured. Two years ago, King had a masectomy after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But even that could not slow her down.
”Juliet kept coming to her lessons, even while she was going through chemotherapy,” Goettling said. ”I`ve never seen such dedication.”
King was a late bloomer as a singer. Although she had performed in choirs at the Second Baptist Church in Joliet as an adolescent and as a young adult, she never thought of herself as a soloist. ”We sang good sacred music at that church, but no one soloed,” King recalled. ”The choir director said that the church was not suitable for soloing.”
But friends and visitors to the church singled out King`s enveloping voice for praise. Some friends suggested that she move to a church that allowed her solo space. So, in 1957, she moved to the Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Joliet.
”I promised myself that the first time I had a chance to sing solo, I would go for it,” King said. ”At first, I didn`t know any of the songs they were singing (at Mt. Olive Baptist), but the music director there promised to help me, so I moved. I`ve been on the move ever since.”
At the same time, she began taking voice lessons at the Joliet Musical College with Lucille Gowey. ”She was the one who said, `Keep going,` ” King said. ”She told me that the first time I came to her she went home and told her family, `I found a voice.` ”
King was busy trying to raise her children, and ”my husband laughed at me when I said I was going to study voice,” she said. ”But I needed God to put something else on my mind besides washing diapers, taking care of children and living in the pit of poverty.”
After five years at Mt. Olive, she moved on to her first paying job as a singer, as a soloist with the Central Presbyterian Church in Joliet. During that time, King also began receiving lessons from Norman Gulbrandsen, a professor at Northwestern University`s School of Music.
Through her connections at Central Presbyterian, King began traveling to other churches and retreats in Michigan and Ohio. She soon was traveling to sing in churches throughout the United States.
Representatives for Central Presbyterian arranged for King`s first trip to Westminster Abbey in September 1972. ”It was probably a bad time to be there,” King recalled. ”During September, most people in Europe are on vacation.”
Nevertheless, officials at Westminster Abbey were impressed, and King was soon being invited to cathedrals and conferences in other parts of Europe. She made four tours to Europe between 1972 and 1978.
”They`re so receptive, and the halls are wonderful,” she said of the Europeans.
It was the experience in these halls that prompted King to begin singing at the Cathedral of St. Raymond in 1987. Although she still attends Central Presbyterian, King prefers the choir and the acoustics at St. Raymond`s cavernous cathedral. ”(Central Presbyterian) doesn`t have the grand piano or a 50-person choir,” King said. ”Singing with a big choir is a challenge. And I believe that I have the voice.”
Even though she traveled extensively during the `70s, King still found time to raise her nine sons and one daughter, who are now between the ages of 30 and 45. They are scattered throughout Joliet and in Texas and Atlanta.
”I`m proud of my children, but I regret that I didn`t spend as much time with them as I should have,” said King, who now lives in her Joliet home with her sister, Anna Roby. ”Sometimes I`ll tell people that I`m not a very good mother, but I just didn`t have the time.”
No so, said son Gary King, 35, who lives in Joliet. ”Her singing never took time away from us,” he said. ”She`s just modest. She`s about the best mother in the world, but, as I recall, she was always singing. Either she was humming or at the piano. It was a constant hymn.”
King also regrets not being able to study music full time earlier in her life. ”Norman Gulbrandson told me that he wished he could have taught me when I was 18,” King said.
”If she had had early training, she could have made music a career,”
said Goettling, who spent 29 years teaching in the music department at the University of Chicago.
But in Joliet, King is considered to be a successful musician who, despite a mundane existence, has maintained her voice through constant studying and performing whenever possible.
”Everyone here describes Juliet as famous,” said Dorothy Cryder, a free-lance writer from Joliet who has been King`s friend for almost 20 years. ”She hasn`t made a lot of money, but that`s not important to her. When anybody speaks of Juliet, they`ll say, `She`s the ambassador of good will.”`
