Freda Charcilia Payne was born on 19 September 1942, in Detroit, Michigan USA, and is an actress and singer, best known for her successful career in music spanning from the 1960s to the 1980s. One of her most notable records is the hit single “Band of Gold” released in 1970, but all of her efforts have helped put her net worth to where it is today.
How rich is Freda Payne? As of mid-2017, sources inform us of a net worth that is at $3 million, mostly earned through a successful career in music and acting, as she’s appeared in films as well as musicals, and has also been a host as part of a talk show. All of these achievements have ensured the position of her wealth.
Freda Payne Net Worth $3 million
Freda grew up listening to jazz music, particularly from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, and attended the Detroit Institute of Musical Arts. She began to get several opportunities, first singing in radio commercial jingles. She also won radio and television talent shows, then in 1963 she moved to New York, and started working with other artists such as Bill Cosby and Quincy Jones. She released a debut album the following year entitled “After the Lights Go Down Low and Much More!!!” She started touring Europe in the mid-1960s, and in 1966 she made another album “How Do You Say I Don’t Love You Anymore. Her popularity started to increase as well as her net worth, resulting in television appearances including in “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson”.
Afterwards, Payne started to add acting to her repertoire, becoming an understudy for the Broadway show “Hallelujah Baby” in 1967. Two years later, she signed with a new record label Invictus, and would release the single “Unhooked Generation”. She then recorded the song “Band of Gold” which would become an instant hit, reaching high numbers in various charts, and became her first gold record with sales estimated at two million. She continued to record songs such as “You Brought the Joy”, “Bring the Boys Home” – another gold record – and “Deeper and Deeper”. She left Invictus in 1973 but would fail to capture the same commercial success. She subsequently had a popular song in “I Wanna See You Soon”, and recorded three albums for Capitol. Her net worth continued to increase with continuous opportunities, as in 1981, she had her own talk show entitled “Today’s Black Woman”. She also found acting work in various films and stage productions, and continued recording while acting, and released albums up to the 1990s, plus she appeared in films such as “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps”.
In 2001, she released the album “Come See About Me” and two years later performed in the show entitled “Love & Payne” which got great reviews. She then released several compilation albums including “Lost in Love” and “Band of Gold: the Best of Freda Payne” – she sang “Band of Gold” in a 2009 episode of “American Idol”. The following year, she participated in “We Are the World” for Haiti Relief, and then recorded the duet “Saving a Life” alongside Sir Cliff Richard in 2011.
For her personal life, it is known that Freda married singer Gregory Abbott in 1976 and their marriage lasted for three years. They had a son during their marriage. She then had a relationship with musician Edmund Sylvers from 1979 to 1983, but has apparently been single since then.
