Sylvester
“You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”: the disco star with the falsetto voice never hid who he was – and left his royalties to fight AIDS.
Sylvester James grew up in Watts, Los Angeles, and sang gospel in his Pentecostal church as a child. When the church condemned his homosexuality he left it, and found friends among a group of Black drag queens and trans women in Los Angeles.
In 1970 he moved to San Francisco and joined the Cockettes, a psychedelic drag troupe. Later, with his own band and the backing singers who became known as the Weather Girls, he developed his mix of gospel, soul and electronic disco. In 1978 “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” became a worldwide disco hit and a gay anthem. His falsetto, his flamboyant, androgynous style and his openness made him a star in San Francisco, which honoured him with a “Sylvester Day”.
Sylvester never hid being gay, even in interviews with the mainstream press. In the 1980s AIDS devastated his circle; his partner Rick Cranmer died in 1987. Sylvester himself fell ill. At the San Francisco Pride parade in 1988 he rode in a wheelchair at the front with the group “People with AIDS”.
He died in San Francisco in December 1988, aged 41, and left the future royalties from his music to AIDS charities.