The Tonight Show's Vicki Randle
by Suzanne Corson, October 10, 2006
In what may be a record, for the last 14 years there has been an out lesbian on network television nearly every weeknight: Vicki Randle, percussionist and vocalist with The Tonight Show band. Randle has been singing us in and out of commercial breaks, tossing her shekere, and playing with the band since Jay Leno took over from Johnny Carson in May 1992. She has also made history as the first woman musician in The Tonight Show band.
Randle's personal life is not a huge topic on the show, but it hasn't been a secret, either. With the exception of band leader Kevin Eubanks, whose bantering with Leno is a regular part of the show, this is true for the other band members as well. Their lives are just not discussed much — their music speaks for them.
The role of a background player or “side person” is a familiar one for Randle. This past year she went on the road as percussionist and background vocalist with Cris Williamson to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Williamson's classic album, The Changer and the Changed. That milestone had personal resonance for Randle as well, since that was the first studio recording Randle was ever on.
In fact, Randle has recorded and toured with most of the iconic figures in women's music: Williamson, Meg Christian, Linda Tillery, Holly Near, Deidre McCalla, Ferron and Margie Adam, among others. Randle has also toured or recorded with mainstream greats such as Aretha Franklin, Laura Nyro, Wayne Shorter, Kenny Loggins, Lionel Richie, George Benson, Celine Dion, Dr. John, Herbie Hancock, the Doobie Brothers, Todd Rundgren and Mickey Hart. She toured so much in the 1980s that she actually turned down lucrative gigs with Anita Baker and Diana Ross so she could get off the road for awhile.
In 2006, she's stepping out in front with her first solo CD, Sleep City: Lullabies for Insomniacs. Though she's performed solo in the past, as she did this past August at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, she's resisted the call of a solo recording until now.
Not that there weren't offers. When she was in her early 20s, companies such as Motown offered her record deals, but Randle wasn't willing to conform to their model of who a black woman singer should be — a stick-figure thin, sequin-gowned woman singing about the man who done her wrong.
And Randle wanted to work with more than her voice. Music has always been an integral part of her life. “Both of my parents are musicians,” she says. Her family has recordings of Randle singing when she was 2 years old. She first picked up a guitar at age 9, and she also plays the piano in addition to the percussion instruments she's seen with on NBC every weeknight.
“I hadn't planned on getting a steady job as a musician,” Randle says. “In making the decision to be a musician, I knew that meant I would be poor. And I had evidence of that.” Her father was a professional jazz pianist, and he and many other jazz musicians were frequently out of work in the '50s and '60s, when that upstart rock 'n' roll was pushing jazz out of the clubs and concert halls. Luckily, Randle's father had a full-time job at the post office. “It was the jazz musicians' motto in L.A.: There's always work at the post office,” Randle recalls.
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