The CAR WASH is still a funky place to be if you bump into Rose Royce while you are there or, more especially, if you bump into Gwen Dickey who is the amazing voice that sings that fantastic song and is still performing all over the world.
All the Rose Royce hits – including Wishing On A Star, I Wanna Get next To You, Love Don’t Live Here Any More, Car Wash and many others – guarantee a brilliant show – not a tribute – but the real thing! Pick your own Rose Royce favourite.
Gwen was ‘wishing on a star’ when she was a little girl and wanting to have a career that would be exciting and mean a lot of travelling. No, she did not have it in mind to sing professionally when she was growing up in Mississipi . Gwen wanted to be an air hostess.
“I loved music from a very early age, probably from the moment I first heard a song,” she recalled. Music worked its magic on me and I used to sing all the time when I was little. We were not well off so we made our own amusement and singing was something just about everyone in the neighbourhood did. I never thought of singing professionally though, I would go so far as saying that it was something I definitely did not want to do. I wanted to travel and being an air stewardess seemed like a good option.
“That didn’t work out and I was living in Miami when someone persuaded me to do some singing. Well, one thing led to another, you start to meet people who hear you, like you and the doors start to open. That’s what happened to me and I joined Rose Royce.
“I loved the music of people like Earth, Wind and Fire, we all did. I still do by the way and we wanted to have the same kind of feel good as they and others had. Car Wash was just perfect and everybody loved it. So, I never made it as an air hostess but I have travelled quite a bit and had a lot of fun along the way. You cannot help having fun when your whole life is about music.”
Another of those great Rose Royce songs is Love Don’t Live Here Anymore. That is certainly not true of Gwen Dickey whose army of fans continues to grow and travel from gig to gig to share another great night of fantastic music. The love lives on for Gwen.
GWEN FACTS
- a freak bathroom accident left Gwen handicapped but it doesn’t stop her putting on a
fantastic live performance - she has sung Car Wash nearly 1,000 times and still loves it
- her best friends include Stevie Wonder and Lionel Ritchie
- she has often called Rose because people think her name is Rose Royce
- Gwen fell in love with Britain some years ago and has a home here
- Gwen and Rose Royce have sold hundreds of millions of albums worldwide
Rose Royce
The Playhouse Theatre, Weston-super-Mare
Sunday 31 July 2022, 7.30pmTickets: £30
