Season of sharing: Amid health woes, finding inspiration in music

Music has always been important to Rosita Watson. The youngest of nine sisters and two brothers, she grew up in a close-knit religious family in Oakland.

Her father was a pastor, her mother taught piano and her older sisters Betty, Mary, Shirley and Macletus formed a gospel singing group, the Watson Sisters, whose 1963 album “Glory Train” earned a four-star review in Billboard magazine.

Watson was too young to be a regular part of the group, but she joined her late sister Betty in a choir that opened for Creedence Clearwater Revival’s June 1969 performances at Fillmore West and Winterland in San Francisco.