"TENDER KISSES," a hit record by Waterloo teen-age vocalist Tracie Spencer, hit No. 1 on the Billboard magazine rating of popular music.
December 31, 1991 she performed with comedian host Jay Leno on the New Year's Eve "Tonight" show on NBC.
For the 16-year-old Spencer, the climb to the top culminates a story book career that was launched when she was 11. In a ceremony at the Black Hawk County Courthouse in Waterloo, Iowa, she signed a contract with a $50,000 initial payment to produce at least two albums for Capitol Records.
Since then she has recorded several top-sellers, has travelled abroad to places like Bologna, Italy, where youngsters shouting "Tracie, Tracie" surrounded her car, has sung in concerts with top-name adult performers and has appeared on nationally broadcast television programs.
Her father, Marvin, a 21-year performer with small bands in Marshalltown and Des Moines, has been her mentor. Older brother Marty is a professional song writer who has supplied his sister with material. Tracie's mother, Theresa, is a Waterloo hospital emergency room nurse.
"I suppose I was around 3 years old when I started singing," Spencer said in a 1989 interview. "My brother Marty and I began singing at weddings and other events when I was around 8 or 9."
WON TALENT SHOWS
Marvin Spencer said he became aware of his daughter's singing potential when she was 7. She won a Bill Riley talent contest at the Sturgis Falls Days celebration in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and in 1987 she won $10,000 on Ed McMahon's "Star Search" television series.
Tracie has been one of the youngest female vocalists ever to break into the top 40 charts. Capitol records officials said she had the potential to be another Whitney Houston.
Tracie has the innocence, the artistic ability. She puts everything into her songs, and she has a vocal range that's magnificent," the record company's director of artist relations, Judy Kerr, said of Spencer when she was only 13.
Among Tracie's hits have been "Save Your Love," "This House," "Symptoms of True Love," "Hide and Seek," and a remake of John Lennon's "Imagine."
HOT LINKS
