Ullanda Innocent-Palmer, today a singer of traditional inspirational Christian music, was earlier an award-winning singer of popular music and well-known jingles heard by millions. She was a fixture on talk shows, appearing as a guest on David Letterman, Joan Rivers, Regis and Kathy Lee, and Saturday Night Live. She also appeared on the Martin Luther King Special.

Innocent has recorded or been associated with a who's who in a galaxy of popular artists and personalities that would include Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Diana Ross, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Lucille Ball, Candice Bergen, Bette Midler, Englebert Humperdinck, James Taylor, Eddie Murphy, and many others. Since her conversion to the Seventh-day Adventist church in 1985, she has been associated with Tremaine Hawkins, Wintley Phipps, Clifton Davis, and other well-known Christian artists.

Ullanda began singing at age thirteen in a church founded by her grandfather, Bishop Alexander Jones, the Jones Temple Church of God in Christ, in Detroit, Michigan. She traveled to New York in 1975, where she sang with Ashford and Simpson, recording the hit song "Solid As a Rock," which became a gold record. She also was involved in two other gold hits, "Sesame Street" and Bill Whither's "Just the Two of Us."

She became the voice for thousands of jingles and commercials, including the ubiquitous Coca-Cola hit "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." Joan Rivers crowned her the "Queen of Jingles."

Since her conversion in 1985, Innocent has hosted a television program, "It's All About Love," which aired on 3ABN for four years; recorded four CDs of sacred music, and co-authored two books, All that Glitters and an autobiography, Something Special. She has traveled the world in her ministry, visiting countless cities in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Caribbean as well as in the U.S.

In 2002, she married H. Schubert Palmer, M.D., a cardiologist and author of God Must Be Crazy. Together they founded Heart and Soul Ministries, an outreach program dedicated to ministering to the heart and soul through service, song, and the written word.

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Reger Smith, Jr., "In All Directions," Adventist Review, May 2005; Other Online Sources.