Arnold credited her friendship from 1964 onwards with Tina Turner for helping to kick start her ultimately successful singing career and for acting as her mentor.

Smith and her friend Gloria Scott had arranged an audition for the three of them to replace the original Ikettes, the dancer/singer troupe that had provided the vocal and dance accompaniments for the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.

The three young women were offered the job on the spot, Smith persuaded Arnold to attend a concert in Fresno that night before making a final decision.

Arnold sang backing vocals on the Ike Turner produced side of the album River Deep – Mountain High.

"[2] Her friendship with Jagger helped her land a solo contract with Immediate Records, a label founded by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham.

[8] She toured with the Small Faces during 1967–68, made several TV appearances with them, and featured as backing vocalist on two of their biggest hits, "Itchycoo Park" and "Tin Soldier".

In 1968 she released the ambitious solo album Kafunta, with orchestral arrangements by John Paul Jones and including self-penned songs and covers such as "Angel of the Morning" and "Eleanor Rigby",[9] Other credits in this period include her duet with Rod Stewart on the single "Come Home Baby" (produced by Mick Jagger on Immediate Records, with Ron Wood on guitar, Keith Richards on bass, Nicky Hopkins on electric piano, Keith Emerson on Hammond organ and the Georgie Fame Brass Section), as well as Chris Farlowe's version of the Motown standard "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" (with Albert Lee on guitar and Carl Palmer on drums).

Her first backing band, the Blue Jays, had been inherited from American soul singer Ronnie Jones and included former Bluesbreakers guitarist Roger Dean.

This was followed by the Nice, whose line-up was Keith Emerson on organ, who had just quit the VIPs (later to be known as Spooky Tooth), David O'List on guitar, Lee Jackson on bass and Ian Hague on drums.

[13] Feeling out of place in the rapidly changing British music scene of the mid-1970s, Arnold and Samuels returned to her hometown of Los Angeles.

During the late 1980s and 1990s Arnold resumed an active career as a session vocalist, and her credits in this period included The KLF ("What Time Is Love?

While the production was playing in Birmingham she met leading UK band Ocean Colour Scene, one of the new wave of latter-day mod groups who (like their mentor Paul Weller), idolised the Small Faces.

Following her earlier meeting with Ocean Colour Scene with whom Arnold would eventually form a close friendship she appeared on their 1997 album "Marchin Already" which reached Number 1 in the UK album charts lending backing vocals to single "Travellers Tune" and duet lead vocals alongside Simon Fowler on 1998 single "It's a Beautiful Thing".

In 2013 Arnold participated in the project The Band of Sisters with David Mindel, a British songwriter, jingle writer and composer of music for film and television.

It brought together Arnold, Mim Grey, Tessa Niles, Lynda Hayes, Stevie Lange and Mandy Bell on the album called Issues.

Arnold was then featured in the Small Faces musical All or Nothing at the Vault Theater Waterloo in which her love affair with Steve Marriott was documented.

She also sang backing vocals alongside Madeline Bell, for the first track "Woo Sé Mama" on Paul Weller's album "A Kind Revolution" released May 2017.

The album was recorded and produced by life-long P. P. enthusiast, OCS star and Paul Weller band guitarist Steve Cradock at his Kundalini Studio in Devon, and follows on—after a 51-year gap – from the singer's first two solo albums on Immediate Records, The First Lady of Immediate and Kafunta, as well as a more recent compilation of previously unreleased material from the late '60s and '70s, The Turning Tide.

The album spans from classic orchestral soul to house music, ending with a 10-minute reading of Bob Dylan's poem "The Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie".