Alice Tan Ridley, a singer best known as an America’s Got Talent semifinalist, has died at the age of 72.
Per Billboard, Ridley’s family shared her obituary yesterday (April 9), revealing that she died on March 25 in New York City. No cause of death has been revealed.
Ridley, whose full name is Alice Ann Ridley-Sidibe, is also the mother of actress Gabourey Sidibe, best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in 2009’s Precious and as a regular on the television series franchise American Horror Story.
A year after Gabourey’s breakout role in Precious – which saw her starring alongside Mo’Nique and Mariah Carey – Ridley wowed television audiences with her America’s Got Talent season five audition, which she undertook at the age of 58, following years of performing as a busker in the subway stations of New York.
Her cover of Etta James‘ ‘At Last’ received a rapturous response from the live crowd and the show’s judges – Sharon Osbourne told her, “Alice, millions of people must’ve gone back and forth on that subway over the 20 years. How come nobody signed you?”
Ridley stuck out to compete until the semifinals, with singer-songwriter Michael Grimm edging out as the eventual winner. Nonetheless, with her manager Dvir Assouline, an Israeli student who first spotted Ridley as a busker, she released her debut album, Never Lost My Way, in 2016.
“Whenever I saw her performing, there were always hundreds of people around her,” Assouline told The Hollywood Reporter. “She brought joy to so many people every day.”
In a 2016 The New York Times feature on the singer, she admitted about her days as a busker: “With so many people passing by, I wondered, ‘Why doesn’t somebody introduce me to someone who could help me out?”
Nonetheless, when her career took off beyond the subway corridors, a part of her was left behind. “When I was no longer down under there, I missed it,” she told the New York Times.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Ridley was forced to retire in 2018 when she reportedly began suffering from dementia.
Alongside Gabourey, Ridley is survived by her son, Ahmed, her siblings and twin grandchildren. Her sister Dorothy Pittman Hughes, a civil rights activist, died in 2022 at the age of 84. Singer and guitarist Roger Ridley, her brother, died tragically in 2005 at the age of 57.