Boni Boyer: July 28, 1958 - December 4, 1996


prince.org itself posted a picture of Boni Boyer today on Instagram and noted that it's been 20 years (yesterday) since she passed away. It was December 4, 2016 that she died of a brain aneurysm while on tour in Australia. I'm not aware who she was touring with, or if she was touring on her own. I was never sure of her age, but she was only a few weeks younger than Prince.

She was born in Washington D.C., and sang for folks Al Jarreau, Tony! Toni! Tone!, Con Funk Shun, Digital Underground, Lionel Richie, and of course Sheila E., then Prince. One of Prince's best post-Revolution band configurations was the SOTT/Lovesexy band.

For me, when Prince reformed his band after the Parade tour, it was a whole new beast. He'd only barely started using some horns here and there on the Purple Rain Tour but incorporated them more on the Parade Tour. There still wasn't a big voice in the band, and while each band member had their own identity, it was still very much in a visual bubble. Switching up Bobby with Sheila, keeping Bliss & Leeds, and adding a voice like Boni, and a female dancer added new energy to his band, and frankly a new female vibe with all the girls. I've always thought of the SOTT band has more of a girl band than a guy band. If you look at just the band, leaving out Prince, it was almost point for point on the balance of male and female.

Whoever wrote the wiki page on her sounds like a fan with really bad grammar and sentence structure skills.

RIP Boni.

RIP

RIP

TrivialPursuit said:

Boni Boyer: July 28, 1958 - December 4, 1996


prince.org itself posted a picture of Boni Boyer today on Instagram and noted that it's been 20 years (yesterday) since she passed away. It was December 4, 2016 that she died of a brain aneurysm while on tour in Australia. I'm not aware who she was touring with, or if she was touring on her own. I was never sure of her age, but she was only a few weeks younger than Prince.

She was born in Washington D.C., and sang for folks Al Jarreau, Tony! Toni! Tone!, Con Funk Shun, Digital Underground, Lionel Richie, and of course Sheila E., then Prince. One of Prince's best post-Revolution band configurations was the SOTT/Lovesexy band.

For me, when Prince reformed his band after the Parade tour, it was a whole new beast. He'd only barely started using some horns here and there on the Purple Rain Tour but incorporated them more on the Parade Tour. There still wasn't a big voice in the band, and while each band member had their own identity, it was still very much in a visual bubble. Switching up Bobby with Sheila, keeping Bliss & Leeds, and adding a voice like Boni, and a female dancer added new energy to his band, and frankly a new female vibe with all the girls. I've always thought of the SOTT band has more of a girl band than a guy band. If you look at just the band, leaving out Prince, it was almost point for point on the balance of male and female.

Whoever wrote the wiki page on her sounds like a fan with really bad grammar and sentence structure skills.

RIP Boni.

Boni had a BIG voice and she was a BEAST on the keyboards. I'm sure that she and Prince are jamming away on the other side.

.

BTW: that "female dancer" that you mentioned was none other than the inimitable Cat Glover. Surely, she deserves better than to be reduced to just a "female dancer." Cat was the first Prince dancer...and she was the best he ever had. She is a large part of the reason that the Lovesexy and SOTT tours are the stuff of legends. For some reason, she doesn't get nearly the respect that she deserves.

FlyOnTheWall said:

Boni had a BIG voice and she was a BEAST on the keyboards. I'm sure that she and Prince are jamming away on the other side.

.

BTW: that "female dancer" that you mentioned was none other than the inimitable Cat Glover. Surely, she deserves better than to be reduced to just a "female dancer." Cat was the first Prince dancer...and she was the best he ever had. She is a large part of the reason that the Lovesexy and SOTT tours are the stuff of legends. For some reason, she doesn't get nearly the respect that she deserves.

She wasn't that great on keyboards. Not horrible, but Rosie was much better than Boni on keys alone. She could obviously play, but she wasn't doing solos like Fink was, or like Lisa could. She was a much bigger vocalist of course, and that's probably why she made the cut when Sheila brought her in.

I know who Cat is. Cat thinks she was the best dancer he ever had. She acts like they ended world hunger or something with their routines. Not quite. But she was good at her job, no doubt.

I think those shows are legendary because, as I mentioned, those bands were something we'd never seen before. Almost a 100% new band. New ideas, new synergy. I think Sheila brought up the value of the band too, just with her experience and talent.

Who do you think was the best dancer he ever had? And is there such a thing?

purplepoppy said:

Who do you think was the best dancer he ever had? And is there such a thing?

He really didn't have many. He had more guys than girls, it seems. The Twinz, Cat, & Mayte - that's 4. But whe you figure in Jerome, Wally, & Greg, then the Game Boyz - that's six.

He had Mayte the longest probably. 1992-1996. Game Boyz were 1990-1992. Cat was 2 years.

For me, it was Mayte. They had a great chemistry and love between them. Cat was great, but she was so spastic at times, it detracted from things, I thought. But she worked hard at what she did, and she was good at it. I believe with Mayte's training in belly dancing and other areas, her dancing was more fluid and poetic in nature.

But since we're talking about Boni and voices, Her and Rosie had different ranges. Rosie was lower, Boni had that soulful church choir edge to her. She also had a 'screaming' quality she could hit when necessary. I sort of wonder how Boni would have sounded in "Diamonds and Pearls" or something like that. I never really heard her just sing like Rosie would do. Prince would give Rosie solos and shit. I do like both. They both offered creativeness, uniqueness, nerve, and talent to the band.