Where is Susan Moonsie?
December 12, 2008 15 Comments
She was the silent one of the trio.
The killer was, she always wore white.
Camisoles.
Her name was Susan Moonsie.
Possibly, the most reclusive musical celebrity (except for her former bandmates) that you can think of.
Remember, Susan? She was the “exotic”-looking one of the girl goup Vanity 6.
As a former Prince girlfriend, Susan holds the distinction of being not only the only African American member of Vanity 6 but the girl who “When Doves Cry” was written about.
Her relationship with His Purple Badness was filled with cheating, mistresses and, of course, drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll.
She came off as quiet, demure.
And hot.
That can’t be denied. She and Prince dated off and on after being introduced to Prince in high school in Minneapolis. Their relationship soured after Denise Matthews aka Vanity entered the click, but Susan was originally supposed to lead Vanity 6 but didn’t want the lead role.
But where is she today? Has anybody seen her? She was rumored to be 16 when Vanity 6 came on the scene (although it was highly unlikely.) If she went to high school with Prince, then she is probably around 47, 48, but no public pictures exist, that I’m aware of. The Internet has more information on Big Foot than it does Susan Moonsie.
Susan may have fallen off some 20 years after she emerged onto the American music scene, but one only has to download or pick up the first and only Vanity 6 album to hear her vocals. By what she put out in the early 1980s, she was Kelly Rowland to Vanity’s Beyonce (not too shabby, either). It was Susan’s vocals that carried half the album, including the club hit “He’s So Dull.” Unlike pigeon-holed girlgroups today, Vanity 6 covered the musical landscape with pop, funk, new wave and R$B music in as little as half a dozen songs. Today, that would get you dropped from a label.
Like the destinies of Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, Susan (and her bandmate Brenda Bennett) was too overpowered by the lead charisma of Vanity. But memories are hard to erase. And Susan, who was widowed after husband David Garfield was killed in a car accident in 1988, will always be remembered.
