In due course, she appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with her new paramour/Svengali, shot by celebrity photographer Richard Avedon with her hand strategically tucked into the waistband of his pants.Īs the front person of Vanity 6 (Prince originally wanted to call them “The Hookers”), Matthews and band mates Brenda Bennett and Susan Moonsie belted out provocative titles like “Drive Me Wild,” “Sex Shooter,” and their biggest hit “Nasty Girl,” while dressed in alluring undergarments, years before Madonna built a career wearing similar attire. Prince Rogers Nelson, aka Prince, saw in Matthews a diamond in the rough, and after discarding his original brand name “Vagina,” settled on the handle Vanity.
None the less, her beauty opened doors to an acting and modeling career in Toronto, then in California.Īt the American Music Awards in 1980, she happened upon a diminutive musician with outsized talent on the verge of stardom. But physical attractiveness proved to be a mixed blessing in those racially restricted times, as childhood friends recalled she drew scores of suitors eager to date her, albeit covertly. Matthews, better known by her stage name “Vanity,” died on Monday at the age of 57 in Fremont, Calif., after checking into a hospital over the weekend for complications due to kidney failure.īorn on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, Ontario, on Jan., 1959, Matthews’ abusive-dysfunctional family situation informed the rest of her life, as did her striking looks derived from her African-European-Hawaiian-Native American ancestry. At the peak of her performing career, Denise Katrina Matthew’s unbridled sexuality drew comparisons to Tina Turner, but she abandoned it all to achieve tranquility as a born-again evangelist.