Sylvia Vanderpool Robinson was born in 1936 in New York City. Robinson would become a singer, songwriter, musician, producer and record, label executive. Robinson is best known for being the founder and CEO of Sugar Hill Records. She is credited with being behind two historic hip-hop records, “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang released in 1980 and “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released in 1982.
Robinson got her start in the music business at the age of 14, when she started singing blues with trumpet player Hot Lips Page and started recording music in 1950 for Columbia Records under the name Little Sylvia. Four years later, she teamed up with Mickey Baker, a guitarist from Kentucky who taught her to play guitar. In 1956, the pair recorded the rock single “Love Is Strange” by Jody Williams and Bo Diddley. The song would reach No.11 on the Billboard pop charts and topped R&B charts in 1957. The duo broke up in 1959, and Sylvia married Joseph Robinson and resumed her solo career under the name Sylvia Robbins.
The pair moved to New Jersey in 1966 and formed a soul music label the following year called All Platinum Records. In 1972 Robinson sent a demo to Al Green of a song she had written called “Pillow Talk”, however, Green declined the record. So Robinson recorded the song herself, this time as Sylvia, and the record reached No. 1 on the R&B chart and landed No. 3 on Billboard Hot 100 in early 1973. “Pillow Talk,” sold two million copies.
In 1978 the couple founded Sugar Hill Records, taking the name from a Black affluent neighborhood in Harlem, New York. Robinson found three young unknown male rappers in Englewood, New Jersey—Big Bank Hang, Master Gee, and Wonder Mike. She would persuade them to improvise their rhymes and record them as the Sugar Hill Gang. This resulted in a nearly fifteen-minute track modified from Chic’s “Good Times.” The song, “Rappers Delight,” reached No. 4 on the R&B charts, No. 56 on Billboard’s Hot 100, and sold more than eight million records. It also introduced hip-hop to a national audience and revolutionized the music business.
In 1982 she signed Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and produced “The Message.” The single which was about life in the ghetto, became one of the most powerful social commentaries of its era. In 1985 the Sugar Hill label folded, in part due to competition with other labels including Def Jam and Profile. Robinson, who was now divorced continued her career as an executive music producer.
At the age of 75, Robinson died at Meadowlands Hospital in Secaucus, New Jersey, of congestive heart failure on September 29, 2011.
Sources:
Robinson, Y. (2016, June 22) Sylvia Robinson (1936-2011). Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/robinson-sylvia-1936-2011/
Sylvia Robinson: Pioneering Record Producer, Ushered in Era of Rap,
www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-kelly/sylvia-robinson-pioneerin_b_6894924.html;
Names You Should Know–In Music: Sylvia Robinson,
http://teamugli.com/names-you-should-know-in-music-sylvia-robinson/;
Sylvia Robinson, Pioneering Producer of Hip-Hop, Is Dead at 75,
Link to original source