Paul Cole joins Birmingham soul queen Ruby Turner on a trip into her past.

You have sung with the biggest names in popular music, and shared the concert stage with Mick Jagger and Bryan Ferry.

You have performed with Boy George, Steve Winwood and Jimmy Ruffin. The Four Tops and The Temptations have made guest appearances on your album, and you front Jools Holland’s globe-trotting Rhythm and Blues Orchestra.

So what’s a girl to do next?

Having just turned 50, Ruby Turner is returning to her roots. And for the undisputed Birmingham queen of soul it’s a family affair.

She has ploughed her savings into a remarkable new album of spiritual songs on which she duets with the woman who has been the biggest influence on her life and career.

A famous blues singer? A soul sister?

No, it’s her mother.

Turner has been laying down tracks in a Birmingham studio with Violetta Douglas, 69, who still lives just off Handsworth’s Soho Road and goes to the local Pentecostal church every Sunday.

It was, she says, a real labour of love.

“Although she sings in church, Mum had never made a record before,” explains Turner.

“I was putting together an album of my favourite gospel songs, the music I grew up with. And the more I listened to the old recordings, the more I remembered singing them in church as a child.

“This is music that is part of my family history, that helped shape who I am.

“So when I got to the Sister Rosetta song Precious Memories, there was only one person I wanted to sing it with.

“I just straight out asked: ‘Mum, will you sing with me?’

“She thought it was hilarious at first, but I talked her into doing it. And, do you know what, she was great!

“We had a ball in the studio. My old pal Bob Lamb was producing the album and he got on with Mum like a house on fire. The two of them were always laughing and joking.

“Sometimes Mum laughed so much she set us all off, and our sides were aching. Then, at the end of the sessions, she thanked me for letting her appear on my album.

“I said: ‘Whoa! I’m the one who should be thanking you, Mum!”

Born in Jamaica’s Montego Bay, Turner moved to Handsworth in 1967, when she was nine years old. Childhood visits to a city church at her mother’s side remain a constant in Turner’s life.

“We all have our spirituality,” she explains. “The whole thing about gospel is that it’s all about hope, the times when there was nothing left, and that music was all you had.

“I left the church when I was about 15, but the church never left me.”

Turner will release the album, titled I’m Travelling On, on a record label she has set up herself.

It is, she says, the only way to guarantee complete artistic freedom, and to record the songs that are so important to her the right way.

“I’ve got a collection of gospel records,” she says. “But lately I’ve been digging out the less-known recordings by pioneers like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who was the first great gospel recording star in the late 1930s.

“She was the original soul sister and started out at the age of four, singing with her mother in the Church of God in Christ and at tent revival meetings. She changed the face of soul music.

“My idea was make a spiritual album that was not necessarily a commercial proposition for the mainstream record companies. I’ve recorded on several labels over the years but this was a real labour of love.

“I didn’t want to be running to someone in a suit to ask permission. I didn’t want to be waiting around for a record label to get things, or people, we needed. That just stifles your creativity and interrupts your momentum.

“If I’d had to wait for a label to dole out the cash so I could make a record, I’d never have done anything.

“More than anything I wanted this to be right. I didn’t want studio tricks and I was having none of that fancy reverb. I wanted these songs to be heard as they were meant to be heard – simple and honest.

“We recorded the first six songs in one day, we were so fired up. I’ve recorded 14 albums and been in the music business for 30 years and I’ve never experienced anything like that before.”

Such is Turner’s conviction in the project that the album carries a ‘Volume 1’ tag-line.

“I’ve set the record label up – it’s called RTR, as in Ruby Turner Records – with a view to releasing another two albums,” she reveals.

As well as gospel greats such as Sister Rosetta, Brother Joe May and Mahalia Jackson, Turner also listened to spiritual recordings recommended to her by close friend Jools Holland while on the tour bus.

“Jools introduced me to songs by Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, who I’d not really associated with that type of music,” she says. He also plays piano on Take My Hand, Precious Lord – a song recorded over the years by people such as Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke.”

This is music, says Turner, that has already stood the test of time.

“I met Amy Winehouse at a Hootenanny a few years ago,” she smiles. “I thought she was very quiet and unassuming in this little plaid skirt, although she had this big voice that came out of her.

“I’ve watched, too, as artists such as Adele and Duffy have achieved great success in a short space of time. I’d like to celebrate the re-emergence of girl singers – for a long time it was nothing but bland boy bands.

“But at the end of the day will any one of them truly stand the test of time? I wonder.”

Ruby Turner is currently touring with Holland’s band, and appears at Belvoir Castle in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on August 8, where the set is likely to contain her show-stopping version of Peace In The Valley.

She also plans to squeeze in solo dates, including at Birmingham Town Hall on November 10.

n The album I’m Travelling On is released on September 7, and is preceded by a single – a cover of Sister Rosetta’s This Train – which is available now.