Alice Tan Ridley unexpectedly sang on the New York City subway on the TV show “America's Got Talent”, which made him famous and died in New York City on March 25. Ms Ridley is the mother of Oscar-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe, now 72 years old.
Her family announced their death in an itu sue posted online. It does not quote the reason or say where she died.
Ms. Ridley’s public life as a singer began underground in the mid-1980s and spent decades singing at the New York City subway station. At first, the subway street business was designed to supplement her income in her daily education. Eventually, she quit her job as a full-time singing job.
In her bustling early days, the show was a political activist working with her brother Roger Ridley and their cousin Jimmy McMillan, who was known for building rents in New York where the parties were too high.
“We are not homeless,” Ms. Ridley told street performers in 2010. “We are not beggars. We are not affected by drugs, you know? There are traditional jobs, and non-traditional jobs.”
She compared New York street performers to “In the Cathedral.”
“It's great,” she said. “This city, especially the music in the underground.”
For Ms. Ridley, underground singing summoned a phone call. In 2005, she worked as a subway singer in the movie Heights, directed by Chris Terrio.
“People always say, ‘Why don’t you sing in the club?’” Ms. Ridley told The New York Post in 2010. I told them, 'This is my club. '”
That year, when she auditioned for “America's Talent”, her big break was out. Usually, most contestants are young, but Ms. Ridley is in her 50s. In her audition, she impressed the judges with her most famous song, “Ent”, recorded by Etta James. She will be eliminated in the semifinals, but she won't be eliminated until other highly praised performances are offered, including renditions of “Proud Mary” and “Midnight Train to Georgia.”
The Talent Fair began her career on the ground, and she began to tour around the world. Ms. Ridley returned to Busking in 2014.
“I missed it when I stopped falling there anymore,” Ms. Ridley told the New York Times in 2016.
That same year, she released her debut album, “Never Lost My Way.”
Alice Tan Ridley was born on December 21, 1952. Alice Ann Ridley was born on December 21, 1952.
“My mother is my greatest influence,” she told the Pennsylvania newspaper on a phone call in the morning of 2013, referring to her mother, Lessie Ridley. “She wrote the songs and played them so we all sang.”
Her father, Melton Lee, is a guitarist. Her older sibling, Roger, is also a street musician who plays around the country and becomes famous after performing in Change Change, a project that unites musicians around the world.
She graduated from Stewart County High School in Lupkin, Georgia around 1969 and moved to New York, where she visited New York during her high school summer vacation. She married Ibnou Sidibe, who was a taxi driver at the time, about 1980.
They had two children, Ahmed and Gabourey, before their marriage divorced in the early 1990s. In addition to her children, Ms. Ridley is survived by two brothers, James D. Ridley and Tommy Lee Cherry. two sisters, Julia Van Mater-Miller and Mildred Ridley Dent; and two grandchildren.
Singing is Ms. Ridley's third career. In the early 1970s, she moved to New York and worked as a nursery teacher. In 1976, she worked as a teacher assistant for children with special needs in a public primary school in New York.
The year Ms. Ridley appeared on “Talent in America,” her daughter, Ms. Sidibe, hit it: She starred in the movie Precied, her Oscar-nominated role. The character appears due to Ms. Ridley. As she said, she was exposed to the movie.
“They asked me to play the role of mother. But as a mom and a teacher, I couldn't play that role. It was too difficult,” Ms. Ridley told The Post in 2010.
The film is an adaptation of Sapphire's 1996 novel “Push”.
“I read the book and handed it to Gaby,” Ms. Ridley said. “Her friends encouraged her to try 'precious', and she got it.” At the time, Ms. Sidibe was a psychology student who secretly worked as a telephone sex operator.
In a Good Morning America interview, Ms. Ridley recalls telling her kids “can be everything you want to be.”
“You can do whatever you want,” Ms. Ridley said. “You just have to get up and do it.”
In Ms. Ridley's case, she wanted to be a singer – anywhere.
Ms. Ridley told the Toronto Star in 2012. “Travelers would worry about their mortgages, getting fired and working, they would pass by me and see me sing. They would stay by my side for two or three hours, hanging out with me in the heat, just like Dickens, because they were entertained, they would all be as cold as Dickens.”
She added: “I bring some joy to those who are traveling.”
