…drying her hair after a performance.
“As soon as I get back to the hotel, first thing I do is I start drying my hair,” Caesar says, “because I believe that two of the main ways of catching a cold is through the mold of your head and under the bottom of your feet.”
She even keeps a change of clothes with her because she sweats a lot during performances. If she doesn’t get out of her wet clothes immediately, she’ll easily catch a cold – which, she says, lasts a lot longer for her than sinus drainage.
“If I’m doing a concert, usually when I come off all of my clothes are wet. So I have to change and get out of those wet clothes and put on dry clothes,” she explains. “Because if I don’t, I’m telling you, the next day I pay for it with colds and things of that nature.”
Her ability to remain healthy and maintain her powerful voice throughout the decades is the reason why Caesar feels she has more music to share with the world. On Fill This House, her favorite song is “Mother Emanuel,” a personal cut dedicated to lives lost in the June 2015 shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. It was at this historic church, 35 years ago, where Caesar received her first honorary doctorate.
“My mama was standing right up there with me,” Caesar recalls. “So I have some wonderful, wonderful memories even though I regret that this [the shooting] happened. [The church] dates all the way back to the 1700s. So that song, ‘Mother Emanuel,’ I genuinely love it because it tells a true story.”
Listen to “Mother Emanuel” below.
Pastor Shirley Caesar: “I Have More Energy Left In Me Than Some 25-Year-Olds” was originally published on blackdoctor.org
