During my career as a backup singer with Vernon and Ruby Shakely and the Shakettes, it often occurred to me that this was not a lifetime occupation and that someday I would have to figure out my rightful place in society.

I did not want to think about these things: I wanted to get out on stage and dance. The Shakelys thought it was cool to hire a white Shakette every once in a while, and for a while I was it. Previous to that I had been a graduate student, sitting in the library at the University of Chicago getting older and older, trying to think of a topic for my doctoral dissertation and, once having found the topic, trying to write about it, I was an English major and I intended to write something that would turn into a book entitled Jane Austen and the War of the Sexes. Another thing I did not like to think about in front of the mirror. At the drop of a hat I could have stood in for a Chiffon, Shirelle, or Marvelette, and I could do a fine imitation of Brenda and the Tabulations.

It is painful to think about those days. It is like yearning for a lover you will never see again and to whom you never got to say goodbye.

Everyone was either startled or horrified when I decided on this line of work. Wasn't I supposed to spend the golden years of my youth in Regenstein Library like the rest of my friends? To be a Shakette had in fact been the burning desire of my heart since puberty, but I had shared this secret with only one person in the world, my college roommate Mary Abbott. She was a sober, contemplative person-a Catholic from Connecticut who leaned more toward Jerry "The Ice Man" Butler and Jackie "Lonely Teardrops" Wilson.

She had been assigned as my freshman roommate and I loved her at once. She had lugged from Connecticut to Chicago a large wooden box containing over seven hundred and fifty choice and vintage 45's. Second of all, her new wardrobe hung in the closet week after week with the price tags still on, while Mary wore her real clothes-the ones she had rolled up in a duffel bag-day after day. To go to church she wore the things her mother had bought her, with the price tags tucked into the sleeves.

It did not take us long to discover that what we liked to do best was to sit endlessly talking and listening to the same record over and over again. One particularly grim winter weekend, we played "I Love You Eddie" (the flip side of the Crystals' major hit "He's a Rebel") all weekend until our dorm-mates felt we had wigged out.

Mary admired the early Ruby whose hits included "Jump for Cover," "Man He's Mine ... .. Shake and Boogie" and the immortal "Love Me All Night Long." When the time came for me to go on the road, Mary did not entirely approve of my decision, which she felt was my way of staving off real life. While this was true, it was also true that never again in my life would someone say, "Hey, Geraldine, wanna wear a Day-Glo dress with fringe, smoke a lot of reefer and dance as a backup to a rock and roll star?"

Mary was my closest friend and in fact my favorite person. I deeply admired her devotion to religion and, when she took me to church with her, I found myself close to tears. I come from a family of relentlessly assimilated Jews and my experience of ritual and observance was minimal. It was Mary who dragged me to ecumenical meetings at Friendship House in which Christians and Jews discussed their similarities. How I wished I had it in me to believe! But just as I had not fit in in high school, and just as I was a misfit as a graduate student in the English department, I felt I also did not have an allotted place in the angelic order.

But these issues were temporarily swept away when I got my big break, which came, in fact, after the High Holy Days. In a fit of longing, I had gotten dressed up and crept into the back of a Conservative synagogue, where I sat and stood, prayer book in hand, not understanding most of what was said, and staring at the Hebrew I could not read. To ease my soul, I went on a kind of rock and roll binge and, finally, my dream came true.

It happened this way. For more years than I cared to think about, I had been a regular at any number of clubs: Billy's Blues Box, the Rib Cage, Bob Hayes' Trapp Club and Pete's Sweet Potato. I had seen just about every bluesman alive, and by the time I joined Ruby a lot of them were dead. I liked sitting in a dark place blue with smoke, drinking a warm beer and watching Mississippi Fred McDowell singing "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl." It was not unusual for the stray white rhythm-and-blues addict to find his or her lonely way to these places, but it was unusual for them to hang around for so many years. At first I was known by face and then I was known by name, and finally I became accustomed to sitting at the owner's table.

My favorite was the Rock and Roll Pavillion, an enormous place where fledgling acts got their start and then came back to pay their respects after they had made it in the big time. I was very tight with the owner, since I used to drop by in the afternoon and watch rehearsals. One day I was told that Marvin Delton was in town but that one of the Deltrons was sick. I did not even have to offer myself. I was offered personally to Marvin Delton by Mack Witherspoon, the Pavillion's owner, who said, in my very presence, "Here's a boss white chick who knows all your routines and she can move. "

Marvin looked me up and down, giving me an insight into the feelings of female slaves about to be auctioned. Apparently he found this idea very wiggy. He hauled out the sick Deltron's dance dress and told me to go put it on. I looked it over and knew it would fit. It was a sign.