(copyright Terry Cryer)

Clara Ward was born on April 21, 1924. Ward was from Philadelphia, PA, where she began her singing and piano career at the age of six. In 1934, she was an accompanist for the Ward Trio, a family group that included her mother, Gertrude and her sister Willa. The Ward Trio later became know as the Ward Singers. The Ward Singers received national attention in 1943 when they sang at the National Baptist Convention. Afterwards they toured throughout the country. In 1948, the group began a fifteen-year career with W. Herbert Brewster. During that time they produced Surely God Is Able and I’m Climbing Higher and Higher. This song made them one of the most popular female gospel groups of their time. Clara Ward was highly regarded for her ability to convey drama in slow gospel ballads and non-metrical hymns such as When I’ve Done the Best I Can. Later Ward built on her style by inserting techniques such as shrieks and growls, moving towards what is known as hard gospel. Her best example of this was the 1957 song Packin’ Up. In 1963 she performed in the first gospel musical written by Langston Hughes, entitled Tambourines To Glory. She made several successful tours in major U.S. settings including the Newport Jazz Festival. Clara Ward died on January 16, 1973. Ward was a great singer, displaying a beautiful alto with a somewhat nasal tone in gospel songs such as How I Got Over and The Old Landmark and the Methodist hymns of the eighteenth century. She had a marked influence on later singers, such as Aretha Franklin, who adopted her moan for secular songs and who saluted her in a gospel album she make with James Cleveland in the early 1970s. Clara Ward is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, CA.

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