Pointer Sisters, San Francisco, CA ©1971

About Bruce Steinberg      Inquiry

I first met the Pointer sisters (three of them, at least – June, Bonnie, and Anita) in 1970 when they were doing live and recorded backup vocal work as the original trio for Elvin Bishop, Cold Blood, Taj Mahal, and other Bay Area groups, most of whom were signed to Bill Graham’s Fillmore and San Francisco labels and produced by David Rubinson, who recognized the girls’ talents early on and kept them busy.

They even went down to New Orleans in 1971 and cut a single called “Don’t Take the Fifth on Me” for Atlantic, but nothing much ever came of it, and fame would elude them for another couple of years until they added their fourth sister, Ruth, recorded their eponymously titled debut album in 1973, and launched a successful international career.

But in 1971, baby June was still just 18 and they were still mostly living with their folks in East Oakland, working as much as they could. I was already hanging and working with a number of David’s artists, including Elvin, Taj, Herbie Hancock, Tower of Power, Victoria, and others, and became good friends with the sisters, seeing them around the office, studios, and clubs pretty often.

I did several casual B&W photo sessions with them over at their folks’ place, and an occasional group shot of them as part of Elvin’s group, which were some of the very first photo sessions they’d ever done. Even back then, they had a sense of thrift-store style that carried over into the more successful part of their career, although at a far more elegant and upscale level.

One day we talked about doing a more formal color photo session at my place, where they could plan to bring their best stuff, change outfits, and generally work into more of a glamour groove rather than the funky come-as-you-are, on-the-fly B&W sessions we’d done so far. We had no illusions or even desire of leaving the funk behind entirely (as if that were ever possible), but only to have some fun trying to take it “uptown” a notch.

Even one of my calico cats managed to work her way into some of the photos (hey, sistahood is powerful!) but on the serious side, this particular photo turned out to be among the best of that session, intriguingly celebrating both their unity and their individuality, and giving a good indication of where the Pointer Sisters (with a capital “S”) would be headed in just a few more years.