In a career spanning more than five decades, she has sung in a wide variety of styles including blues, jazz, gospel, comedy, cabaret, and folk.
RoadKnight's debut album was a live set, People Get Ready (November 1973), which was recorded at Frank Traynor's Folk Club.
[6] According to Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, she provided "covers of material by the likes of Curtis Mayfield, Duke Ellington, Joni Mitchell and Malvina Reynolds.
[6] The Canberra Times's Michael Foster described her as a "big, big-voiced and big-hearted woman" and she "sings with that same gut-tearing intensity but tends to give more prominence to the traditional blues, the songs which blossomed in the dusty earth of the plantations.
"[8] He felt that "Of all the women I have heard singing the blues Miss Roadknight comes closest to the sound of-the great: exponents... of another generation, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.
[6][12][13] It appeared on the Infinity label via Festival Records and was co-produced by Russell Dunlop (of Ayers Rock), Simon Heath and Wahanui Wynyard.
[6] Foster's colleague, Brownwyn Watson, caught RoadKnight's gig in July 1978: the singer had "a striking presence on stage and her folk-blues combination of songs were sometimes amusing, sometimes sad.
[6] In 1980 RoadKnight and two friends formed the promotional group Honky Tonk Angels (which also became the name of her record label) to mount the first Australian solo tour by the acclaimed American singer-songwriter and slide guitarist Ellen McIlwaine, who toured Australian capital cities in November 1980 (with RoadKnight as the support act) to great critical acclaim.
[6] Robert Christgau rated the album as B+ and felt that "she musters an impressively gruff blues timbre and on occasion some rudimentary swing, I'm not convinced she always goes flat on purpose, and when she emotes she may strain the credulity even of those who set their standards by Nick Cave and Olivia Newton-John.