Karen Clark Sheard

Born:: November 15, 1960, she's 51 and American.
Birthname:: Karen Valencia Clark.
Snapshot:: An Artist with 6 releases, a member of 1 group, and credited 7 times on others' music. 6 collaborations and 5 musical relatives.

Karen Clark-Sheard (born Karen Valencia Clark on November 15, 1960) is a four-time Grammy Award winning American gospel singer, songwriter, member of the pioneering female Gospel-group, The Clark Sisters, and mother of contemporary gospel singer and actress Kierra "Kiki" Sheard. Sheard rose to fame as a solo artist in the mid-90s and has become one of the most respected musically inclined vocalist of her era.

During the hiatus of the Clark Sisters, Sheard recorded her critically acclaimed and much anticipated solo album Finally Karen, which spawned her hit, "Balm in Gilead" (a re-recording of a song she originally recorded as part of The Clark Sisters back in the 1980s for their Heart & Soul album) the R&B-flavored "Just For Me" and "Nothing Without You" - a contemporary duet with R&B diva Faith Evans. Finally Karen became one of the most successful gospel albums of 1998 earning Sheard a Grammy nomination and earning her a Soul Train Lady of Soul Award for "Best Female Vocalist"..

After her debut album success and much touring, Sheard was hospitalized in 2001 after one of her blood vessels burst during a minor surgery, resulting in doctors giving her a 2% chance of survival. Her testimony inspired the title name for her long-awaited sophomore project, Second Chance released in 2002, featuring a "Secret Place" - which is now considered a classic amongst fans. Sheard recorded two more live albums, including The Heavens Are Telling and It's Not Over (which featured some studio recordings), before releasing All In One, Sheard's first all-studio-recorded album in 13 years. The album debuted at #3 on the U.S. Billboard Gospel Chart and #98 on Billboard's Top 200 albums chart.

The "Queen of Soul", Aretha Franklin, chose Sheard to play her in her upcoming biopic, believing that only Sheard herself could play the role better than any other artist in her time..

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Clark-Sheard. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.