Almeta Ingram-Miller has heard the complaints before.
When her Richmond gospel group, the Ingramettes — then led by her mother Maggie Ingram — first performed at the Richmond Folk Festival, there was a bit of scandal. “I remember that there was blowback,” she says. “There was some backlash at church because, oh my goodness, we were going to be singing in front of people drinking alcoholic beverages.”
Get ready to clutch those pearls all over again, as the Ingramettes are due to perform a special MLK day show at Révéler Experiences — a Carytown nightclub — on Jan. 17 [even though the show will be at 3 p.m.].
Those Folk Festival appearances spurred the Ingramettes to spread the gospel to national, even international, audiences. “It just flipped on a dime for us because, up until then, 99% of our audiences were in African-American churches,” she says, adding that some people didn’t like the new direction. “To my mom [Maggie], that made no sense. In loving kindness, she’d answer them, ‘But those who are not sick have no need for a physician. Is that not what the Bible says?'”
Mama Maggie left the earthly plane in 2015, but not before parlaying the Folk Festival exposure into something much bigger for her musical ministry — for one thing, she and the group performed at the Martin Luther King memorial dedication at the Kennedy Center in 2011. With Almeta in the lead vocal role, they were honored in 2022 with the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship, the highest accolade the United States can bestow on traditional artists. This past year, the group closed the folk festival’s Virginia stage once again, performing in the spacious 7,500-seat Allianz Amphitheatre.
But the Legendary Ingramettes’ appearance at the 100-seat Révéler will be that rare thing for them: An up close and personal experience. “It’s a chance to see this powerful group in an intimate setting,” says Jon Lohman, Virginia’s former state folklorist who is promoting the afternoon show under the guise of his nonprofit, The Center For Cultural Vibrancy. “They will also be paying tribute to the late Dr. Martin Luther King in honor of MLK Day and highlighting the family’s own history with the Civil Rights movement.”
While the Ingrams never met Dr. King, Maggie did write the moving monologue, “I Have a Dream,” after his death. “We had this little AM radio in the car,” Ingram-Miller recalls. “And I can remember we got the news that he’d been assassinated. She dealt with that grief by sitting down and writing the song.”
[Below is a cellphone video Style Weekly Editor Brent Baldwin took during an impromptu rehearsal of “I Have A Dream (A Tribute to Dr. King)” from 2015.]
The group also had connections to King’s ministry. “He delivered the Mountaintop sermon at the Mason’s Temple Church of God church in Memphis, Tennessee,” she says. “That’s the headquarters for our church. We are the Church of God in Christ. That’s the Ingramettes. We were raising money and sending it to Memphis because we knew the movement would need money.”
When single mother Maggie first moved her five children to Richmond, Virginia from Florida in the early ’60’s, she got a job as a housekeeper with Oliver W. Hill Sr., the civil rights attorney who had represented the plaintiffs in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. She also started a prison ministry that, through Almeta, an ordained minister, still exists today.
The group took another chance when Lohman, who also produced their albums, “Live in Richmond” and “Take a Look at the Book,” offered to take them overseas on a tour of Ireland and then, later, Serbia and Bulgaria. Again, it was bringing their religious message to new places. “When we toured in Ireland in, in 2022,” Ingram-Miller says, “we did the shows in the synagogues and the cathedrals in the daytime but every night, we’d perform for the people in the pubs. It was meeting people where they are.”
People think that performing in a Carytown club is weird for a gospel band. Almeta laughs. “When we were in Serbia, every place was like Révéler. I believe that had Mom been alive, she would have been right there with us.”
All of Maggie’s kids (and a sizable number of extended family) have seen stints in the family band over its 60+ year history. Only eldest daughter Almeta has served since the beginning. Today’s Ingramettes also includes the vocals of Almeta’s sister-in-law Carrie Ingram Jackson, Maggie’s goddaughter Valerie Stewart, and newcomer Jaccarri Woodson. The singers are augmented by Patrick Newby on keyboards, Calvin “Kool-Aid” Curry on bass, Gary Jones on drums, and special guest Jared Pool on guitar.
Missing in action is Maggie’s granddaughter Cheryl Maroney Yancey, a fan favorite who brought a wild frenzy to concerts by jumping into the crowd and dancing with spectators. She left the group last year. “Yes, I miss her just as I missed everyone who has left the group. If it were up to me, I’d have 20 Ingramettes on stage with me,” Ingram-Miller says. “But I wasn’t going to try and find someone else who would do that kind of thing. She developed that … she grew into that.”
The Révéler performance is being conceptualized as “The Ingramettes With Friends” because of the involvement of Pool and singer John Stanley, the former director for Patti LaBelle. “We’re going to mix it up a little bit,” Meta says. “We’re going do “I Had a Dream,” and another that mama wrote called ‘Goin’ Down to the River.'” In honor of King’s birthday, the group will also perform songs associated with the Civil Rights movement, like “A Change is Gonna Come” and “I’ve Endured,”
“That’s Ola Belle Reed’s song,” she says of the latter. “That’s a good song that just kinda lets you know that the movement was a struggle, but that the struggle was worth it.”
The Legendary Ingramettes and friends perform at Révéler Experiences on Saturday, Jan. 17. $15. This will be an afternoon show at 3 p.m. https://www.revelerexperiences.com/
