US singer Anita Pointer has just died at the age of 74. The group she formed with her sisters, the Pointer Sisters, rose to fame in the 1970s and ’80s with hits like “I’m So Excited.”
Anita Pointer, a member of the Pointer Sisters, a soul and R&B group she formed with her sisters in the 1970s and ’80s, died Saturday of cancer at the age of 74, according to her agent.
“While we are deeply saddened by the loss of Anita, we are comforted to know that she is now with her daughter Jada and sisters June and Bonnie and at peace,” her family said in a statement.
The group is best known for the hits I’m So Excited, released in 1984 and winning multiple Grammy Awards.
Raised in Oakland, California with her sisters Ruth, Bonnie, and June, Anita Pointer began singing as a child at the church where her pastor father served. Anita joined the group formed by her sisters Bonnie and June in 1969 and the Pointer Sisters released their first album in 1973. This album, entitled The Pointer Sisters, contained a first hit, the song Yes We Can Can.
“I was planning to continue being a secretary in a law firm like I used to when I heard Bonnie and June sing in the Northern California State Youth Choir when they performed Oh Happy Day and I just loved it. So I quit my job and I thought I had to do the same,” she told Goldmine magazine in 2019.
planet tube
The Pointer Sisters topped the charts in 1978 with a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire.”
The group then chained hits together over the following decade, from He’s So Shy in 1980 to Slow Hand in 1981, via Neutron Dance or Jump (for My Love) in 1984 and Automatic that same year.
I’m So Excited, the hit that became worldwide, was featured on the album So Excited released in 1982. The single, signed by Anita Pointer, June Pointer, Ruth Pointer and Trevor Lawrence, was remixed in 1984. The piece notably appears on the soundtrack of many films, from Working Girl starring Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver to Pedro Almodovar’s Passenger Lovers.
Their last track to enter the American charts was Christmas Standard, Christmas in New York, in 2005. The still active group had lost Bonnie, who left in 1977 to pursue a solo career, and June disappeared in 2006 and joined in Issa further Pointer and Sadako Pointer Johnson, daughter and granddaughter of Ruth.
Anita Pointer lost her daughter Jada to cancer in 2003.