Celinda Cosby (born 1957), known professionally as Celinda Pink, is a female

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

singer. Between 1993 and 1995, she released two studio albums on Step One Records and three singles, including her 1993 single "Pack Your Lies and Go", which peaked at No. 68 on the Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts.

Biography

She was born Celinda Cosby in 1957 in

Tuscaloosa, Alabama Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal and Piedmont plains meet. Alabama's fifth-largest city, it had an estimated population o ...

. After being abandoned by her birth parents, she was raised by a foster family in Alabama. Cosby gave her first performance in the third grade, singing "

Elvira Elvira is a female given name. First recorded in medieval Spain, it is likely of Germanic (Gothic) origin. Elvira may refer to: People Nobility * Elvira Menéndez (died 921), daughter of Hermenegildo Gutiérrez and wife of Ordoño II of Leó ...

" at a talent competition. After moving in with her grandparents, she also attended a reform school. There she cited the presence of African American students who would listen to soul and R&B music as an influence. She moved to

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

at age 16 in an attempt to find her mother and attend

Tennessee State University Tennessee State University (Tennessee State, Tenn State, or TSU) is a public historically black land-grant university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1912, it is the only state-funded historically black university in Tenness ...

. After this she spent much of the 1970s singing in nightclubs around Tennessee. During this time she developed a heroin addiction for which she later went to rehabilitation, became the mother of two children, and adopted her stage name of Celinda Pink. It was in her nightclub gigs that she was discovered by promoter Buzz Ledford, who eventually helped her sign to Step One Records, an independent label. Her debut album ''Victimized'' came out in 1993 and charted the single "Pack Up Your Lies and Go". A review in ''

Stereo Review ''Sound & Vision'' is an American magazine, purchased by AVTech Media Ltd. (UK) in March 2018, covering home theater, audio, video and multimedia consumer products. Before 2000, it had been published for most of its history as ''Stereo Review''. ...

'' was positive, calling Pink's voice "bluesy, ballsy, and full of rue". A second album, ''Unchained'', followed in 1995 also on Step One. A review published in the magazine '' Gavin Report'' was positive, noting influences of

blues music Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

in her delivery.

Discography

Albums

Singles

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pink, Celinda American women country singers American country singer-songwriters Living people 1957 births Step One Records artists Country musicians from Alabama 21st-century American women Singer-songwriters from Alabama