Lincoln Theater, 769 E. Long Street, Columbus

2:00 - 4:00 p.m.

When We Were Girls: Telling Our Stories of Trauma and Resiliency

Panel Discussion, moderated by Dr. Elaine Richardson aka Dr. E

The panel is part of Rise Sister Rise--a groundbreaking research project evaluating African American girls’ experience of trauma and resiliency, Project Principal Investigator Fran Frazier. As an introduction to the Rise Sister Rise project we have assembled a panel of nationally renowned speakers to share their stories of trauma and resiliency. Featured speakers are Terrie Williams, Founder of Stay Strong Foundation; Valerie Rainford, Home Lending Business Support Executive and Chair of JP Morgan Chase Diversity Advisory Group on Home Lending; Charleta Tavares, executive director of Multiethnic Advocates for Cultural Competency; Angela Hollis, Co-founder of the NYC Black Women for Black Girls Giving Circle; and, Dr. Angela Neal Barnett, associate professor of psychology at Kent

• Listeners are strongly encouraged to call in and join the conversation.


• Listen live online at http://wosu.org/allsides/  


• Archived video of interview is available here: http://www.ohiochannel.org/MediaLibrary/Media.aspx?fileId=129655

December, 2010

Songtress Elaine Richardson, affectionately known as Dr. E, has come a long way from the days of singing in Miss Ross’ talent shows and her personal as well as professional growth becomes overtly apparent in her new CD, “Elevated.”  

Just a few years ago, in 2006, Dr. E established herself as an independent recording artistwhen she started Give Us Free Records then released her first CD, “Coat of Flesh” along side the Ohio-based R&B Soul band Fleshcoat.

But, this time, she’s going at it alone and taking her music career to the next level. Dr. E's voice is comparable to Stephanie Mills, Erykah Badu, and Billie Holliday

With “Elevated,” Dr. E wants listeners to get to know her better as a soul singer. Therefore, this recording focuses on a live sound that features her soulful, jazzy vocals accompanied by some of Cleveland’s finest musicians.

Dr. E’s voice is comparable to the likes of Stephanie Mills, Erykah Badu, Macy Gray and even Billie Holliday. In fact, you hear remnants of all of those artists at some point as she blends a diversity of styles including hints of blues, jazz, gospel and pop.

“Elevated,” the fourth track on the titled CD, is a song you’ll want to play over and over again. It’s very catchy and almost everyone can relate to it on some level.

Others tracks that stand out are the bluesy “Let Me Clear My Throat,” the jazzy “Walk This Road,” and the soulful “Giving My Life to You” that features Russell Thompson on saxophone.  “Breaking,” a poem for Phyllis Hyman – written by Mary E. Weems – is a great way to break up the music and a nice added touch as well.

Basically, you can’t put Dr. E in a box. You never know what to expect from her.

Now, the moniker Dr. E isn’t some stage name Richardson simply attached to herself either. It’s a title she’s worked extremely hard to achieve.

Richardson, a professor of Literacy Studies in the College of Education at The Ohio State University, is a distinguished alumnus of Cleveland State University, Michigan State, and a 1978 graduate of East Technical High School.

Additionally, she’s authored two academic books and is currently seeking to publish an autobiography titled PGD to PHD (Poor Girl on Dope to Ph.D).

This street/urban literature, educational memoir is centered on Richardson’s younger life through the neighborhoods of Cleveland and beyond as she battles drugs, alcoholism, abuse, single-parenthood and sexual exploration until she enters CSU, searching for a new identity and struggling to save her life.  

Already, it is considered a must read for “at-risk,” urban youth – especially adolescent Black girls.

Musically, she’s performed as opening act for David Hollister and Martha Munizzi, at the Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of fame, the Central Pennsylvania Festival of Arts, Ingenuity Festival, The Lincoln Theatre in Columbus and on Fox 8 News in the Morning. 

Currently, she’s hosting a series of meet and greets to promote “Elevated.”

A CD Release Concert and Party will be held at Gibbs Lounge, 3560 Severance Circle, in Cleveland Heights on Sunday Aug. 29, from 5 to 8 p.m. Proceeds benefit the East Tech Scholarship Fund.

Elaine Richardson, an English professor at Ohio State University, is also a jazz songwriter and vocalist, whose compositions have been heard on such TV programs as "All My Children" and "Dharma & Greg."

She's so high on education that when she presents a concert of her new CD on Sunday at Gibb's Restaurant in Severance Town Center, the event's profits will go to the scholarship fund of her alma mater, East Tech High School. 

Her stage name is Dr. E, but years ago when she was a Cleveland State University dropout, high on drugs and working the streets of downtown Cleveland as a prostitute, she was nameless to her johns -- and futureless -- or so it appeared.

"I am so glad I don't look like where I came from," said Richardson. "So many of my friends are dead."

Prostitution was a big detour from her days singing in the children's Sunshine Band at Holy Grove Missionary Baptist Church. Every time she sang a solo, "The old folks would say, 'Shine, baby,' " said Richardson, 50. Her childhood came to a halt when she was 13, raped by a new acquaintance -- a friend of a friend. "I was just square -- naive -- when he asked me to go into a bedroom with him.

"From that time on I became a problem teenager."

In junior high, Richardson watched for the police while another friend -- "a tennis shoe pimp," she calls him, broke into cars. But soon, he went to jail, and she went on to East Tech.

"My mother did everything she could to turn me around," said Richardson. One bright light: She sang twice a year in a downtown Cleveland talent show run by a perfectionist producer. It was the show all the kids wanted to be in, but it was demanding.

"It was like you were training for the Olympics to be in that show," she said. But she loved the applause of the big auditorium's audience.

Richardson graduated from high school and went on to Cleveland State, though "I was never one of the kids people thought would go to college." There, she felt unprepared for higher education. "I was in developmental courses -- just wandering around CSU. I didn't fit in," she said.

She fell in with friends who smoked marijuana and drank, though she had never done drugs in high school. Soon she skipped classes, didn't do her work and flunked out. Then the streets beckoned.

"Then girls on the street looked like models -- they looked like movie stars," said Richardson. "I said, wow -- I want to look like them!"

She worked Euclid and Prospect avenues. Her drug use escalated. Richardson "graduated" to higher-paying New York streets. She had a baby girl, Evelyn, in 1984. Just before another daughter was born in 1987, she went on a binge and ended up in a hospital thinking she was carrying a dead baby.

But Ebony was born healthy, and Richardson started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings while in the hospital. "I was just ready to do whatever I had to do to keep my children," she said.

She returned to Cleveland when Ebony was 6 months old, moved back with her parents, went on welfare and went back to school. "I had plenty of support from family and friends," she said -- including a neighbor who took care of her girls while she was in class. "Once people see you trying to do something with your life, they help," she said.

In 1993, Richardson got her master's degree in English from Cleveland State, and went on for a tuition-free doctorate at Michigan State. After that, there were professorships at the University of Minnesota and Penn State, a Fulbright appointment at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica -- and the addition of another daughter, Kaila. In 2007, she was given Cleveland State's distinguished alumni award.

"I cherish that," she said.

The professor of literacy studies starts her fourth year at Ohio State this fall, and keeps on with the music composition she began while studying at Michigan State.

She wrote almost all the songs of "Elevated," the new CD -- a musical autobiography -- she will perform on Sunday. She collaborated with Larry D. Marcus, Cleveland native and Billboard Award-winning songwriter, who produced the album. It was recorded by Jon Guggenheim of C-Town Sound Inc. of Cleveland.

Richardson, who has written or co-authored five academic books, is eager to tell her story. "I hope I can help people to have hope." Even if they are sitting in a jail cell, as she did a few times, "singing and entertaining the girls."

She's shopping around her autobiography, "PGD to Ph.D," to publishers. (PGD means Po' Girl on Dope.) The book is in everyday language, said Richardson, who is a specialist in "discourse practices of Afro diasporic cultures," or black language patterns, according to her Ohio State faculty webpage. "People from where I come from will read this book," she said.

Maybe her message will get through to someone before it's too late, she said. "Life is a struggle, and you're going to fumble. But you still have a chance to better yourself.

"Everybody's life has a purpose."

Here you'll find soultracks' review of Elevated as well as a feature on Dr. E