Shea Chambers

Shea Chambers, was born Sheila Gay Chambers in Fort Knox, Kentucky on June 30. Shea is the daughter of Hyrum Chambers (aka J.R. Chambers) and Aldora Wright (aka Pat Wright), and the oldest of three siblings, brother Glenn Chambers and sister Shellie Chambers-Wagner. Sheila was 10-years old when the family of five moved to West Bloomfield, Michigan from Detroit where she lived until the age of eighteen. Sheila began piano, violin and dancing lessons at age seven. She didn't continue her piano and violin lessons, but she did continue dancing into her adult years, where she studied Jazz, Tap, and Ballet, and was a member of two local dance companies in Detroit. Sheila loved music and would sing along with the radio to Brenda Lee and Fats Domino as a toddler, but too shy to sing in front of family and friends, as she grew older. Her junior year of high school, she auditioned and got the part of "Anita" in West Side Story. She choreographed the production and shocked everyone because they heard her really sing for the first time. Sheila was bitten by the acting and music bug, then spent the rest of her high school years in acting class alongside fellow actor and friend Jeff Osterhage. Two weeks before her eighteenth birthday, she received a call from Katy Schlinker, who invited Sheila to audition for a local band in Dearborn, Michigan. That was the beginning of her professional career. After moving to Los Angeles and struggling to make ends meet, Shea landed a job with Capital Records' Credit Union where she developed a friendship with Lester Sill executive for Colgems Records, who would talk to Sheila about her aspirations to be a recording artist. Sheila was later hired at MCA Whitney Recording Studio in Glendale as a receptionist. The first week at MCA Whitney Recording Studio, Sheila met Barry White's tour manager Tony Sepe and arranger Gene Page and they questioned Chambers about her aspirations in the music industry, Chambers would express that she wanted to be a solo artist. Chambers auditioned for the pair by singing on Page's newly arranged R&B version of "I'm in the Mood for Love." Impressed with Sheila's voice, Page and Sepe hired legendary producer Leon Ware, (producer for Marvin Gaye), to produce a 4-song demo for Sheila. Mentored by Page and Ware, Chambers got a call from Tony Sepe to pick up a cassette tape to learn a song for a film project called "Endless Love." Gene Page had arranged with Lionel Richie for Chambers to record for a party scene in the movie so an actress could lip sync to her voice. Chambers recorded the song that next morning at Devonshire Studios in North Hollywood, California. Sheila thought she had hit the big time, which is when she added the "h" to "Sheilah" to make it stand out. But later she learned that her song version of "Endless Love" was pulled from the soundtrack record, but her voice remained in the movie as uncredited. During that period, Sheilah performed on two of Barry White's records, "The Man Is Back!" and "Just For You" and White also produced a track that Chambers wrote titled ''I Give My Heart''.