[2][3] Established as a top local lounge act, Hughes and Stephens were eventually spotted in a Dallas club by Al Williams - leader of the Four Step Brothers dance troupe - who signed as the duo's manager successfully transferring them to the Chicago nightclub circuit.
[5] In the early 1970s Hughes branched out into acting, her first evident credit being the 1971 blaxploitation film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song which was created by Melvin Van Peebles.
Van Peebles next cast her as Earnestine in his 1972 musical Don't Play Us Cheap; a production which marked Hughes debut on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
Hughes had her second Broadway tenure in the musical Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope in which she impressed audience-member Harry Belafonte: subsequent to performing in Paul Sills' stage adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses at the 1973 Festival dei Due Mondi in Umbria Hughes was recruited by Belafonte to serve as second vocalist on his six-month North American tour in 1974, and then again on his eight-month global tour in 1976.
In 1982 - in a rare non-musical stage role - Hughes portrayed the maid in an all-black version of Long Day's Journey Into Night taped for the MT&R and broadcast by ABC-TV.
[16] Hughes later stage musical résumé would include a 1984 off-Broadway revival of Take Me Along, a 1985 off-off-Broadway turn in the non-musical drama Long Time Since Yesterday, the 1987 national tour of Dreamgirls (reprising her Broadway role), and God's Trombones!