At first, singer Leela James, who was born in the eighties and grew up in L.A., strived after a career in sports. She was a fanatic athlete in high school, but when she injured her knee, this dream ended. She started spending more time making music and wrote her own songs in class. Her father raised her with the music of B.B. King, Al Green and Marvin Gaye. But she was also interested in gospel and sang in the local church. On her debut CD A Change Is Gonna Come, named after Sam Cooke’s hit in 1964, she presents a mix of rhythm & blues, funk and gospel. She herself describes it as ´back porch soul´, because it’s a raw, hot style that reminds her of her childhood and of warm summer days, when the blues was sung and played on the porch.
