Aug. 25, 1973: The Illuminations with Donna Robbins

 

One of these young women was embarking on a career that took her around the world. See the Footnote: 

Aug. 25, 1973 

Rockin’ Illuminations

Eye the Big Time; Offer

High-Powered Stage Act 

IT WAS THEIR FIRST appearance in a couple months, that UB Black Student Union mixer, and The Illuminations are still beaming with the success of it as they talk three days later in Donna Robbins’ parents’ gracious wood-paneled living room on Buffalo’s near West Side.

          “Sometimes,” Donna is saying, “we can practice once a week and get up and sound great, but Lily has been working us to death lately. Every day last week we practiced. And it helps.”

* * *

“I HAD THE biggest head when I walked off the stage Friday night,” grins William Lawrence, drummer in the girls’ backup group, “just from bein’ part of it.”

          The Illuminations’ success is no occasional Friday night thing, however. Donna, Lily Cobbs and Deanna Sims have played Erie, Pa.; St. Catharines, Ont. (“It’s difficult, going back and forth through Customs,” Donna says.), Syracuse and Binghamton.

          They’ve also been at the Tack Room in Cheektowaga and have appeared on bills with The Delfonics at the Apollo Theater here and with The Intruders and Brenda & The Tabulations at the Century Theater.

          “We had sort of a conflict with Brenda & The Tabulations,” Donna says. “The male groups notice how well you perform, but the female groups, they’re checking out what you’ve got on and whether your fingernail polish is on straight.”

* * *

THE ILLUMINATIONS are rockers – everything from Aretha Franklin to Earth, Wind & Fire, Donna says – but they borrow their steps, their harmonies, their matching outfits and their high-powered stage act from no one.

          Lily, who has the highest voice, favors the more ballad-like songs, but she often gets outvoted by Donna, who carries the middle range, and Deanna, with her deep alto. They both like fast-moving numbers.

          “Usually Lily’ll show us where to go,” Donna says. “She hears more I think than we do. Deanna and I’ll be strugglin’ and tryin’ and she’ll come up with something and it’ll be baaad.

* * *

“OUR STEPS? No, they aren’t planned. They really aren’t. We start off nice and cool and just work on up. We follow each other amazingly well. It’s like we can read each other’s mind. I won’t know when Lily’s going to raise her left hand, but mine’ll come up anyway.”

          Their heaviest numbers are Aretha Franklin’s “Dr. Feelgood” and “I Want to Take You Higher,” the Sly & The Family Stone hit, and both of them are crowd-movers.

          “Those are two we have to save for last,” Lily says. “We get too tired if we do them sooner.”

          “At the Apollo,” says Donna, “when we came to ‘Dance to the Music,’ I went out into the audience and they had to put those police guards up. Somebody tried to take my shoe.”

          Another high point is Lily doing Gladys Knight & The Pips’ “I Don’t Want to Do Wrong,” a heavily dramatic thing for which Donna and Deanna drop back out of the spotlight, recapturing the intensity they discovered in the number the first time they did it live at the Apollo.

          Meantime, The Illuminations have their eyes on the big time and there’s signs that it may not be far off. Word is that the tapes they’ve sent out to New York City and Detroit have been well-received and the three feel they’re on the verge of getting a recording contract.

          It wouldn’t be their first. They were the first act signed into the Black Development Foundation’s recording venture more than a year ago. They put in a lot of studio time, they say, but nothing was released.

* * *

“WE WANTED to move around and they wanted us to stay in Buffalo in the recording studio,” Donna says. “We were going to Erie then, doing shows, and we’d get home at 3 or 4 in the morning and have to be up at 9. We were singin’ background for four groups. It was too much.”

          Lily, the only one remaining of the original Illuminations which started out three years ago, arranges the harmonies and has an extra phone at home on which she takes care of the group’s bookings.

          A former fashion design major at Bryant & Stratton, she also picks out the clothes. There’s a new outfit for each set.

          “Usually,” she says, “we buy stuff out of season when it’s discounted. Right now, we’re getting into summer stuff.”

          She’s the spokesman too, but this time Donna’s the one that’s most up for rapping.

* * *

DONNA’S A model part-time, having started when she was 15 after a local agency spotted her dancing for the African Cultural Center on the “Portraits of My People” TV series. She’s worked in Chicago and Los Angeles, taking mostly weekend assignments. “But I’m afraid of airplanes,” she confesses.

          The girls aren’t averse to occasional hard scheduling. When they first started, they were working two East Side clubs at once.

          “We’d do two or three numbers at El Morocco on William,” Lily says, “then run over and do four or five at Shandoo’s on Sycamore, five blocks away. On Easter, we did a matinee at the El Morocco, then went to Rochester to do a show that night.”

          Temporarily their local appearances have been limited because of two factors – lack of a regular back-up group and lack of reliable transportation.

          “We had to ask for a ride home from UB,” Lily remarks.

* * *

BEHIND THEM last week was their previous band – Carlos Gandy on guitar, Brian Inman playing bass guitar and drummer William Lawrence – but differences in taste (Carlos is into heavy instrumental riffs like Mandrill’s) keep them from working together regularly.

          William plans to stay on (“These girls,” he says, “they’re like my sisters.”) and The Illuminations hope to build another band around him with a bass player, a guitarist and an organist.

          “We’ve auditioned several musicians,” Lily says, “but we need to have somebody who’s really good. I think we’re going to be able to find somebody now, ‘cause after that show at UB our phones haven’t stopped ringin’.” 

The box/sidebar: 

Singing Families 

          All three of The Illuminations have been singing since they were kids, partly for the love of it but also because their families are musically inclined.

          Lily Cobbs’ parents both sing. Deanna Robbins’ father had a singing group with his brothers and Deanna Sims’ uncle, Oscar Charles, is a veteran night club singer.

          Lily, who’s 21 and a McKinley High graduate, formerly sang with a gospel group and later in a commercial quartet with three guys. Days she works at Buffalo China Corp.

          Donna, also 21, first met Lily in junior high school. Donna went on to parochial high school, Bishop O’Hearn, and attended Hilbert College and UB. She works as an examiner for the Erie County Department of Social Services.

          Donna was formerly one of four female singers in the Del-Vons, which broke up after one of the members married basketball player Calvin Murphy.

          Deanna, the newest member of the group, is 18 and a graduate of Holy Angels Academy. She works in her parents’ dairy bar on Fougeron Street.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: The Illuminations, from left, Deanna Sims, Lily Cobbs and Donna Robbins.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Deanna Sims became Deanna Sims Clark and lives in Cheektowaga. Her Facebook page doesn’t reveal much about her, except that she’s a cousin of retired Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnett Whitfield and has had a job that involves wearing a white lab coat.

          Lily Cobbs now is apparently Lily or Lillie Cobbs Vincent, but she doesn’t show up anywhere online except in a response by Deanna to a posting about Donna Robbins on a website called The Isle of Deserted Pop Stars.

That posting says Donna followed advice from Rick James, went to Canada and built a career there, working night clubs and making television appearances. She released a couple records and appeared with Jim Carrey on a TV special out of Vancouver.

Later she did five years, off and on, on the Costa del Sol in Spain and performed with groups in Grand Hyatt hotels in Asia and the Middle East. When her sister Geneva Harris died in 2004, the obituary said Donna was living in Hong Kong. She was back in Buffalo in January 2016, making an appearance at an Orchestra Meets Jazz concert in Kleinhans Music Hall.

By 2020, she was retired and hit a patch of bad luck. According to a story in April on WIVB-TV, her brother died, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, the pandemic hit and bills were piling up. Then her stove and water heater broke. A couple Buffalo women police officers proved to be her salvation, at least on the domestic end of things. They bought her a new oven and water tank, installed them and kept checking in to see how she’s doing. Here’s hoping she’s bounced back.