The hit off Broadway show Rock & Roll Man tells the inspiring story of DJ Alan Freed. He not only was one of the first DJs to play original songs by Black artists on the radio in the segregated 1950s and 1960s, but he integrated artists and audiences in concerts. Freed championed artists like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Drifters, The Coasters, The Platters and LaVern Baker.
“Rock & Roll Man talks about a show that brings people together who are not supposed to be together,” says Valisia LeKae who plays LaVern Baker and stars in the show with Constantine Maroulis (Alan Freed), Joe Pantoliano (record store owner Leo Mintz and mobster Morris Levy) and Rodrick Covington (Little Richard). “It brought people together in the name of love, in the name of music and broke some rules along the way.” The show is currently playing at New World Stages.
Portraying R&B singer LaVern Baker who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the ultimate gift. “She is this dynamic performer with loads of personality who used humor to allow herself to navigate through many different audiences,” says LeKae who cherishes Baker’s resilience.
“LaVern Baker died at the young age of 67, after having both of her legs amputated. And she would say, ‘I don’t have my legs, but I still have my voice. I can still get out there and sing,’” says LeKae. “She was not going to allow any person or illness to stop her from using her voice as a gift to the world and she died doing so.”
LeKae gets that passion for singing. When she was very young her mother and grandmother talked about how little Valisia didn’t like to speak. “I was very, very quiet and my grandmother was concerned about why I wasn’t saying anything,” says the Memphis native. “But I like to think that I was just a tuned-in listener and more interested in connecting with people.”
But everything changed when she went to church and heard the choir sing. “I saw how these women and men would transcend the audience, put them in a state of mind and make them feel something. They were able to connect with the parishioners, ministers, and other members of the choir,” she says.
LeKae was so hooked into singing she knew that would be her preferred method of communication. “I probably became more fluent in song than I did in speech,” she says. “If I was able to take away the pain, fear, sorrow, even if it was just for three minutes, like the choir did, I thought, I’m going to be doing that.”
When she wasn’t singing in church she looked for other venues where she could perform. Her grandfather, who today is still a barber at 91, would let LeKae perform at his hair shows. “Any time time someone had a funeral or wedding I was asked to perform,” says LeKae. She sang at Liberty Land, the local theme park. During college she performed at Dollywood in 1950 and 1960s musical revues. “I got to do a lot of Diana Ross music,” she says.
After graduating from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville LeKae auditioned for and a job performing the USO in New York City. “I spent my first year in New York City sleeping on a couch in Queens performing with the USO.”
She ultimately got cast in the show Almost Heaven: Songs and Stories of John Denver and her castmate, Terry Burrell, took her under her wing, “Being the wonderful woman she is, she said to me, ‘do you have an agent?’ And I said, ‘no, not really.’ And she replied, ‘stick with me kid I’m just gonna take care of you.’”
Within days of connecting with Burrell’s agent, she had an audition for the Broadway show Three Penny Opera and was cast that day as a swing, who would cover multiple roles. “It was just that quick,” says LeKae. “I remember them calling my agents and saying, ‘She can act and sing and play so many characters. Let’s put her in this show.’ It wasn’t like eight million auditions.”
More Broadway credits followed including 110 In The Shade, Ragtime and The Book of Mormon. She was cast in a starring role playing Diana Ross in Motown the Musical. In a dazzling performance that included a show-stopping “Reach Out and Touch” she was nominated for Grammy, Tony, Drama League awards for the role. She won a Theatre World Award for her performance.
And in 2013, in the midst of that major career high, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. LeKae was 34. She had no family history of ovarian or breast cancer. And she had to fully step away from the show and focus on her healing.
“I never really knew about ovarian cancer. I just remember receiving a phone call from my doctor saying that I was diagnosed with clear cell carcinoma and not really even understanding what that was,” she says.
“At the time, not many organizations were talking about young women with ovarian cancer, let alone black women with ovarian cancer.” LeKae felt like a fish out of water trying to navigate her diagnosis and recovery. “I went on websites for ovarian cancer, seeing older women, Caucasian women, and hearing their stories and everything was targeted to them.”
That experience lit a fire her belly to be a fierce advocate for young women facing cancer. In a video for Look Good Feel Better she said, “My immediate response was to go out and tell the world. That little girl who did not speak when she was four or five was ready to roar.”
LeKae thought, you have an opportunity to educate not only women of color, but women who are younger. “Here I was in my early thirties. I never had a child before and this really encouraged me to use my voice as an instrument of love and healing to advocate for women who, like myself, who are in their twenties and early thirties who are enduring cancer.”
After a brutal treatment and healing LeKae made her way back to the stage. She played groundbreaking playwright Lorraine Hansberry in Sweet Lorraine. On March 15 LeKae will be making her Carnegie Hall debut in the show Hitsville: Celebrating Motown with the New York Pops. And she’s once again dazzling audiences in Rock & Roll Man eight shows a week singing LaVern Baker’s beloved songs like “Tweedle Dee” and “Jim Dandy.”
And LeKae gets to do what she loves most, which is to sing. “Singing is my greatest connection to a higher power,” she says. “It’s the greatest love making, care-taking and nurturing. It is the greatest gift to the human soul for me. And I get to do that. I am blessed.”
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