Alfa Anderson, singer with Chic, dies at 78

Alfa Anderson, the singer behind memorable disco records including the No. 1 hits “Le Freak” and “Good Times,” has died. She was 78.

The death was confirmed by Anderson’s publicist, Tonya Hawley, who did not cite a cause or say when or where Anderson died.

Anderson’s voice became a constant presence in the disco era from her work with the band Chic and with other prominent artists, including Sister Sledge, Diana Ross and Mick Jagger.

Her musical career blossomed after she moved from Augusta, Georgia, to New York, where she studied education and became a teacher, marking up homework and leading classes while performing with bands around the city.

She was eventually introduced to Luther Vandross, who invited her to a Chic vocal session shortly after the band was formed by guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards. Anderson sang background vocals on Chic’s debut album before becoming a lead vocalist with Luci Martin. The two were the band’s lead singers from 1978 to 1983.

Her voice can be heard on some of the band’s best-known hits, including “Good Times.” She sang solo on “At Last I Am Free” and “I Want Your Love.”

In 2013, Anderson told the online magazine PopMatters that “I Want Your Love,” a Top 10 pop hit in 1979, was a song she still enjoyed decades later.

“It made me feel like I was really an integral part of the group, not just a background singer,” she said. “It actually forced me to throw off my Southern Baptist roots and not be so shy about expressing my sensuality or sexuality.”

She also sang lead, with session vocalist Diva Gray, on “Le Freak,” which the Library of Congress added to its National Recording Registry in 2017, celebrating it as “completely evocative of an era but also undeniably timeless.”

Alfa Karlys Anderson, the eldest of four children, was born on Sept. 7, 1946, in Augusta, to Alonso and Essie Anderson, according to a 2007 profile in The Augusta Chronicle. Her father worked as a postal worker; her mother was a social worker.

“My earliest memories are of singing at home with my family, at school and at our church,” Anderson told The Daily News of New York in 2004. “I sang for the pure joy. Until I moved to New York, I never knew you could make money singing.”

After Anderson graduated from Lucy C. Laney High School, where she played saxophone, flute and piccolo, she earned a degree from Paine College in Augusta. After moving to New York, she earned a master’s degree from Teachers College at Columbia University in Manhattan. She sang in the choir at both colleges.

While singing professionally in New York in the 1970s, including background vocal work on several artists’ records and on the soundtrack to “The Wiz,” she started teaching. She told PopMatters that she worked at Hunter College in Manhattan until Chic went on its first tour.

After Chic disbanded, she was with Vandross’ touring band from 1982 through 1987. It was there that she met her future husband, Eluriel “Tinkr” Barfield, who played bass in the band.

They married, she became a mother to his two sons, and she went back to school to get a second master’s degree, in educational leadership, from Bank Street College of Education in Manhattan, PopMatters reported.

She returned to her education career, but she also continued to perform, on her own as well with other artists, including her husband and two other former Chic vocalists, Norma Jean Wright and Luci Martin. In 2017 she released her first full-length solo album, “Music From My Heart,” which included a tribute to Vandross, “When Luther Sings.”

Information on survivors was not immediately available.

Anderson spoke to PopMatters in 2018 about the influence of disco. It was, she said, “intergenerational and multicultural” and could be enjoyed by anyone, no matter their background.

“Disco was always a place where people could get away from society’s restrictions,” she said. “The world puts you in a box, but when you’re on the floor dancing, and you grab somebody’s hand, it doesn’t matter whose hand it is. That’s what disco gave to the world.”