As her father walked down the alley and out of her life for good, 5-year-old Belinda West coped the best way she could.
She sang. "Jesus loves me, this I know..."
"Singing became an escape for me," says Belinda Womack, now 54. "I could escape into music. I could cry into my music."
In short order, singing became more than a refuge for her — it turned into a career. For about a decade, Belinda Womack was probably the best-known woman vocalist in Tampa Bay. She and her band, Kool Reflektions, played an endless array of nightclub and restaurant gigs, performing a crowd-pleasing mix of jazz standards and more modern fare. With her powerful contralto, elegant phrasing and stately but accessible stage presence, she became one of the few local artists who could fill up a room, weekend in and weekend out.
In the mid-'90s, Womack saw the live jazz scene crumbling. Her last regular gig was at the Le Bordeaux restaurant (now St. Bart's) on South Howard. It had a dance floor. She says management pressured her to emphasize adult-contemporary pop hits over jazz. "We apparently didn't have enough people on the dance floor long enough to drink enough," she says. "There was tension between those who wanted to dance and those who wanted to listen."
So Belinda Womack walked away from nightclub work. These days, she gigs occasionally, and stages periodic jazz coffeehouses at Wellspring Methodist Church in Tampa, where she's been the Pastor of Worship & Arts for a year.
All the while Womack entertained Bay area secular crowds several nights a week, she was active in church music. She's spent more than a decade as a music minister — at Palm Harbor Methodist and, before that, Hyde Park Methodist.
She grew up on Southern gospel in her native Augusta, Ga. Raised by her grandparents, who had to pinch to make ends meet, she attended church Wednesday, Friday and Sunday — no exceptions. Despite her strict upbringing, Belinda was allowed to sing in a Supremes-style group in her early teens. Because Augusta was a military town, most of their shows were in strip clubs. A church deacon chaperoned the act, and Belinda says she never got so much as a peep at the dancers. Her entire $100 a week went into the family till.
From 1973 to 1981, the singer based in Nashville, but was out on the road most of the time with a popular touring outfit called Bodyheat. In '79, she scored an obscure disco hit called "Seabiscuit in the Fifth" as Belinda West.
She settled in Tampa after meeting her future husband, Ty Womack, here in the early '80s. Now divorced, they have two grown children, Erica and Derek. Both perform with their mother in church and sometimes on secular gigs.
Womack cherishes the times she can bust out with some jazz material, but as far as going back to regular club work — nah. "Four sets a night?" she says with a grin. "That in no way appeals to me."
Upcoming area gig: Jazz & Java w/Belinda Womack & the Katz (feat. guest Eric Darius), 6 p.m. Sun., April 22; Wellspring Methodist Church, Tampa; Kairos Worship Services, Wed. nights in April (6:45-8:15 p.m.), Oldsmar Senior Center
More info: belindasinger.com
Music Issue 2007: Chicks Rock
Tampa Bay's top 10 women musicians — plus 100 must-have CDs by women artists
