With her powerful voice and exuberant delivery, Joyce Sims added a very human quality to club classics that otherwise anticipated dance music's increasingly digital direction through the late '80s and into the '90s. Born in Rochester, NY, in 1959, Sims made a fortuitous connection when her record label teamed her with Kurtis Mantronik, the visionary New York producer of electro and hip-hop. They soon scored hits with 1986's "(You Are My) All And All" and 1987's "Come Into My Life," two songs with a combination of sultry R&B, sleek electro-funk, and hip-hop beats that felt utterly fresh. Later teamings with producers like Junior Vasquez gave her many further opportunities to add warmth and texture to sleek house grooves, a task she clearly relished right up until her passing in 2022.