Mildred Virginia Jackson (born July 15, 1944) is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter and former model. Beginning her career in the early 1960s, three of Jackson’s albums have been certified gold by the RIAA for over 500,000 copies. Jackson vocal performances are often distinguished by long, humorous, and explicit spoken sections in her music, which she started doing on stage to get the attention of the audience. She recorded songs in a disco or dance music style and occasionally in a country style.
Occasionally, Jackson refers to herself as other have toted as the “mother of hip-hop,” or of rapping itself. According to the cataloguing site WhoSampled.com, her songs have appeared in 189 samples, 51 covers, and six remixes revealing the appeal of her proto-typical rapping style of delivery.
Born in Thomson, Georgia, Jackson is the daughter of a sharecropper. Her mother died when she was a child and subsequently, she and her father moved to Newark, New Jersey. By the time Jackson was in her mid-teens, she had moved to Brooklyn to live with an aunt. She occasionally worked as a model for magazines like JIVE and Sepia.
Dared by a $5 bet back in 1964, Millie sang at a club in New York City that led her to be discovered. She appeared in a “string of one nighters” as a result.
Though she was a poet, her onstage banter would become the selling point in her stage act. Banter that initially stemmed from being unsure of what to do in front of the crowd.
Written by Dianne Washington