Ebony Gray
Singer who made her name as Cassie Charlton in 'Brookside'
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Your support makes all the difference.Carolyn Anne Williams (Ebony Gray), singer and actress: born Liverpool 25 January 1954; married (one daughter); died Liverpool 8 August 2003.
A singer who ran workshops for black women and young people for a quarter of a century, Ebony Gray found national recognition when she acted Cassie Charlton in the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside (1997-98), set in her native Liverpool.
Cassie, who worked at the Trading Post and the garage, was jealous of how close her sister, Elaine (Beverly Hills), and brother-in-law, Mick Johnson (Louis Emerick), were to her dying mother, Gladys (Eileen O'Brien). Eventually, the couple carried out the mercy killing they believed Gladys wanted, smothering her with a pillow to end the pain she endured after being diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. Cassie reported them to the police, but Mick successfully argued that the "murderer" was Elaine, who left Brookside Close, never to be seen again.
Gray observed that the role of Cassie gained her a respect she had not previously enjoyed. "That helped me more than anyone can imagine," she said. "It put me in a position of being recognised - it bridged a lot of gaps."
Born Carolyn Williams in 1954 in the Toxteth district of Liverpool, the daughter of a Trinidadian sailor and his English wife, she left for Los Angeles in 1974 and trained with the Watts Repertory Company, the United States's first black rep group, named after the small area of the city where African Americans rebelled against racial discrimination in 1965.
She returned with the name Ebony Gray and helped to start a drama group at her former school, Granby Primary, the Merseyside Caribbean Centre and a Methodist youth centre. Gray put her own talents on display when she regularly sang soul and jazz at the Grafton Rooms, Liverpool, and became a vocalist in pubs and clubs with the British-based African group Osibisa and two pop music legends, Donovan and the Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green. She also performed some of her own compositions. Then came her role in Brookside (1997).
After setting up Just Us Productions in 1998 with her sister, Angela T. Moten, who had acting experience in amateur theatre, Gray collaborated with the writer Barbara Phillips on an autobiographical musical, Ebony's Album, tracing a family through five generations and across three continents. Staged at the Neptune Theatre in Liverpool in 2000, its cast included Margi Clarke and the former Brookside actor Louis Emerick, as well as Gray's daughter, Tammy Ingram.
Last year, Gray devised and presented a documentary in the My Liverpool trilogy for Granada TV, as part of the city's bid to become European Capital of Culture.
Anthony Hayward
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