#5 Dajae [Karen Gordon] | "Everyone Knows Dajae. Nobody Knows Karen."

Karen Gordon 'aka Dajae' grew up in West Englewood on Chicago's South Side. Music was in the house. Her father, Reginald Gordon, was a doo-wop singer who performed on the Ed Sullivan Show. She had the family gift and her mother nurtured it, but Karen's path to it was long and unsteady. She spent years practicing alone, singing background for Jive Records, earning a gold album on a Will Smith record, and auditioning for groups that turned her away. By the time she was approaching thirty, she was ready to quit.   In 1992, a last-minute introduction to producer Cajmere led to "Brighter Days”, the house music staple, a genre she hadn't sought out, but the she would define. The song reached number two on the Billboard dance charts and never stopped being played. And her career blossomed.   More than thirty years later, Dajae's voice remains one of the most recognized in house music, and Karen Gordon is largely unknown outside of it. In this conversation recorded at Bridgeport Records, with host Lori Branch, Karen shares about her family's musical lineage, her passion for singing, the high’s & low’s of her career, spirituality, what it means to be a woman vocalist in a scene that often left its female voices uncredited, and her life today on the South Side, caring for her mother.