SEASONED SOUL FINDS ITS GROOVE

by Shanon Weaver

Seasoned Soul did not begin with a marketing plan, a slick audition piece, or somebody in a conference room deciding what “the audience” wanted.

It began the old-fashioned way—with a handful of performers and the sudden realization that when the right voices find each other, the room just knows.

The group’s roots are in the Dallas-based Spectacular Follies. In 2024, director Deanne Meese put together a Motown segment for the show, bringing individual singers into a group that performed classics like “My Girl,” “Midnight Train to Georgia” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

“It just worked,” says Jacqui Baldwin, known to many as Sista Jacqui.

That sounds simple, but “just worked” carries a lot of history.

Michael Perkins was born in Fort Worth, raised in Little Rock, and graduated from High School in 1978 before serving in the military, including time on submarines. Music, though, got to him early. He sang in church and remembers his mother giving him the Jackson 5 Christmas album. “That’s when I knew I wanted to be a singer,” he says.

Michael sang overseas while in the service, in a reggae band in Florida, and eventually came back to Texas, where his mother was living in a senior home—which changed the shape of his performing life. “That’s what motivated me to start singing for senior centers,” he says. “There was no entertainment.”

Sandra Kaye brings a different kind of seasoning. A Dallas native, she began her career in the nightclub scene of her hometown, performing eight years in the Hideaway Clubs and recording jingles for radio and television. She studied at Bishop College, found early professional opportunities at the West End Cabaret, and built a career that has taken her through big band performances across the United States and Asia. Her credits include opening for Dionne Warwick, Patti Austin, Johnny Taylor, Monty Alexander and David “Fathead” Newman.

She laughs off the temptation to list too much more, saying, “I don’t want to brag,” though in this case her résumé seems prepared to do a little tasteful bragging on her behalf.

Sista Jacqui’s road began in Mississippi, ran through Chicago and spent summers in Memphis, which is not a bad geographic triangle for a future singer. Her first love was gospel, but the Temptations made a serious claim on her heart. “My mom said if I mentioned David Ruffin’s name in our house one more time, I’d have to go find another place to live,” she jokes.

For years, Jacqui knew she could move, harmonize and sing in church, but she did not fully trust the size of her own gift until a producer from California heard her sing at a wedding. If she could sound like that there, he told her, she would be amazing in a studio. Her professional career began in 1983 near Chicago and later carried her as an international gospel singer to Australia, Hawaii, Europe, New Zealand and Fiji.

After moving to Texas, Jacqui discovered the Follies here in the pages of Celebration Magazine. Her daughter encouraged her to audition. Sandra joined because friends were involved and the timing felt right in semi-retirement. Michael arrived after years of encouragement from a friend who had seen him perform as a karaoke host.

Different roads, same stage.

Now Seasoned Soul is stepping beyond the Follies as its own professional group, with Michael, Jacqui, Sandra and Charles McBride, whose deep voice the others describe with the kind of admiration usually reserved for Barry White or Lou Rawls. Their sound still honors Motown, but the reach is wider: gospel, jazz, blues, Philly soul, Memphis soul, smooth jazz, and the music that made people get up and dance.

Jacqui says the name fits because that is exactly what they are: “Four voices with dynamic harmonies and personality…and history.” Then she adds a promise: “We are going to take this show on the road.”

That road still begins with gratitude for the Spectacular Follies, the place where the voices first found each other. Seasoned Soul is looking toward senior communities, special events, clubs, and the people who have been asking for the music they know in their bones.

There are worse missions than that. Four seasoned performers, one shared sound, and a simple belief that some songs do not belong in the past. They belong in the room, alive and breathing, with the audience clapping along before they even realize their hands have joined in.