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, New York, 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.