Rhetta Hughes (born Dallas, Texas, June 15, 1939, died June 3, 2019) was an American soul singer and musical theatre actress.
Although Hughes sang from a young age into adulthood in the choir of a Baptist church in her hometown of Dallas, she had no aspirations to be a professional singer and had been employed for five years as a nurse at Parkland Memorial Hospital. In 1963 an impromptu vocal performance at the local club where her close friend Tennyson Stephens played piano caused the club’s managers to hire her.
In the early 1970s Hughes branched out into acting, her first evident credit being the 1971 blaxploitation film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song directed by Melvin Van Peebles. He recruited her for his stage musical Don’t Play Us Cheap affording Hughes her Broadway debut in 1972. Hughes had her second Broadway tenure in the musical Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope in which she impressed audience-member Harry Belafonte. He recruited her to serve as second vocalist on his six-month North American tour in 1974, and then again on his eight-month global tour in 1976.
Huges remained active as a singer and stage performer until the mid-1990s; she returned to session singing in 2008.
| Credit Type | Production | Season |
|---|---|---|
| Actor | God’s Trombones | 1989-90 Season |