Mary Wilson – The Death of a Supreme!

The Supremes were a huge part of my childhood having older siblings that were already “Hip & Groovy,” I learned to love the music of the Detroit Sound Machine named, “Motown!” Back then during the late 60s, and early 70s, I remember very well the great music that came out of Detroit and the Supremes were right at the top of the charts.  My memories of this fabulous girl group was what I saw on television, getting a hair brush pretending it was a microphone while trying to dance and sing like them, but also watching my sisters perform their unique dance moves while staying in rhythm with the music. Those times, I will never forget!

Mary Wilson (March 6, 1944 – February 8, 2021) was an American singer. She gained worldwide recognition as a founding member of The Supremes, the most successful Motown act of the 1960s and the best-charting female group in U.S. chart history, as well as one of the best-selling girl groups of all-time. The group released twelve number-one hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100 which set the record at the time, ten of which Wilson sang backing vocals on.

Wilson remained with the group following the departures of other original members, Florence Ballard in 1967 and Diana Ross in 1970, though the group disbanded following Wilson’s own departure in 1977. Wilson later became a New York Times best-selling author in 1986 with the release of her first autobiography, Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme, which set records for sales in its genre, and later for the autobiography Supreme Faith: Someday We’ll Be Together.

Continuing a successful career as a concert performer in Las Vegas, Wilson also worked in activism, fighting to pass Truth in Music Advertising bills and donating to various charities. Wilson was inducted along with Ross and Ballard (as members of the Supremes) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

Early life – 

Mary Wilson was born March 6, 1944, to Sam, a butcher, and Johnnie Mae Wilson in Greenville, Mississippi. She was the eldest of three children including a brother, Roosevelt, and a sister, Cathy. The Wilsons moved to Chicago, part of the Great Migration in which her father joined many African Americans seeking work in the North, but at age three, Mary Wilson was taken in by her aunt Ivory “I.V.” and uncle John L. Pippin in Detroit. Her parents eventually separated and Wilson’s mother and siblings later joined them in Detroit, though by then Wilson had come to believe I.V. was her real mother. To make ends meet, Wilson’s mother worked as a domestic worker. Wilson and her family had settled in the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects, a housing project in Detroit where Wilson first met Florence Ballard. The duo became friends while singing in their school’s talent show. In 1959, Ballard asked Wilson to audition for Milton Jenkins, who was forming a sister group to his male vocal trio, the Primes (two members of which were later in The Temptations). Wilson was soon accepted into the group known as The Primettes, with Diana Ross and Betty McGlown, who lived in the same housing project with Wilson and Ballard. In this period, Wilson also met Aretha, Erma, and Carolyn Franklin, daughters of the pastor at her local Baptist church.

Wilson graduated from Detroit’s Northeastern High School in January 1962. Despite her mother’s urging that she goes to college, Wilson instead focused on her music career.

Career – 

Wilson at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2019

The Primettes signed to Motown Records in 1961, changing the group’s name to The Supremes. In between that period, McGlown left to get married and was replaced by Barbara Martin. In 1962, the group was reduced to a trio after Martin’s departure. The Supremes scored their first hit in 1963 with the song, “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes”, and reached No. 1 on the pop charts for the first time with the hit, “Where Did Our Love Go”, becoming their first of 12 No. 1 singles. (Though Wilson sang background on all of their hits before 1967, it was later revealed that Motown used in-house background singers, The Andantes, for the hits “Love Child” and “Someday We’ll Be Together”).

By 1964, the group had become international superstars. In 1967, Motown president Berry Gordy changed the name of the group to Diana Ross & The Supremes, and after a period of tension, Florence Ballard was removed from the Supremes that July. Cindy Birdsong was chosen to take her place. The new lineup continued to record hit singles, although several stalled outside the top 20 chart range. Ross left the group in early 1970, and at her farewell performance, Jean Terrell was introduced as the replacement for Ross. According to Wilson in her memoirs, Berry Gordy told Wilson that he thought of having Syreeta Wright join the group in a last-minute change after Terrell had already been introduced as lead singer, to which Wilson refused. With Terrell, the Supremes recorded seven top-40 hit singles in a three-year period. One “River Deep/Mountain High” was a collaboration with the Four Tops. Other recordings by the trio which charted include; “Up the Ladder to the Roof”, “Stoned Love”, “Nathan Jones”, and “Floy Joy”. Of these releases, only “Stoned Love” reached a No. 1 status (R&B Chart). Unlike the latter years with Ross, however, all but one of the hits, “Automatically Sunshine”, succeeded in reaching the top 20 charts, with two breaking into the top 10. During this period, Wilson contributed lead or co-lead vocals to several Supremes songs, including the hits “Floy Joy” and “Automatically Sunshine”, and the title track of the 1971 album Touch.

Wilson in 2019 – 

In 1972, Cindy Birdsong left the group following marriage and pregnancy and was replaced by Lynda Lawrence. The group’s popularity and place on record charts dropped significantly. For the first time in a decade, two singles in a row failed to break into the top 40, including the Stevie Wonder penned-and-produced “Bad Weather”. Discouraged, Jean Terrell and Lynda Lawrence both departed in late 1973. Scherrie Payne was recruited from a group called The Glass House. They were signed to the Invictus label, owned by the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting-production team (who composed 10 of the Supremes No. 1 1960s singles). Cindy Birdsong also returned. Beginning with this lineup change, Wilson began doing almost half of the group’s lead vocal duties, as she was considered the group’s main attraction and reason for continuing. In 1975, Wilson sang lead on the Top 10 disco hit “Early Morning Love”. In 1976, the group scored its final hit single with “I’m Gonna Let My Heart Do the Walking”, written and produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland Group and included on the H-D-H produced album High Energy. Birdsong again departed, just before the album’s release, and was replaced by the group’s final official member, Susaye Greene, whose voice was dubbed over two songs. High Energy produced a flurry of positive reviews and sales, but a follow-up H-D-H effort in 1977 failed to ignite much interest. In late 1977, Wilson left The Supremes, following a performance at London’s Drury Lane Theatre. After Payne and Greene unsuccessfully lobbied to get a replacement for Wilson, the Supremes officially disbanded.

Wilson became involved in a protracted legal battle with Motown over management of the Supremes. After an out-of-court settlement, Wilson signed with Motown for solo work, releasing a disco-heavy self-titled album in 1979. A single from the album, “Red Hot”, had a modest showing of No. 90 on the pop charts. Midway through the production of a second solo album in 1980, Motown dropped her from its roster. Throughout the mid-1980s, Wilson focused on performances in musical theater productions, including Beehive, Dancing in the Streets, and Supreme Soul.

In 1994, The Supremes were recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7060 Hollywood Blvd.

Wilson found major success once more with her memoir: Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme in 1986. The book remained on the national best-seller list for months and established a sales record for the genre. The book focused on the early career of the Supremes and its success during the 1960s. Four years later, in 1990, Wilson released her second memoir: Supreme Faith: Someday We’ll Be Together, also a best-seller, which focused on the Supremes in the 1970s. In between this period, Wilson became a frequent guest on several television programs and talk shows and began regularly performing in Las Vegas casinos and resorts. Wilson then recorded a cover version of “Ooh Child” for the Motorcity label in 1990. A year later, she signed with CEO Records and released the album, Walk the Line, in 1992. The label filed for bankruptcy the day after its national release. Wilson maintained that she was deceived about the financial status of the label. The available copies of the album quickly sold out, however, and Wilson continued her success as a concert performer.

Wilson fought two court cases with former employees over usage of the Supremes name; Supremes’ replacement singers Lynda Lawrence and Scherrie Payne and a former backing vocalist from her 1980s concert work, Kaaren Ragland. In both cases, the courts found for the employees. This prompted Wilson to take a high-profile role in lobbying for “Truth in Music” legislation, which prohibits the usage of musical acts names unless an original member of the group is in the act or the group is properly licensed by the last person to hold the right of title to the name. Her efforts succeeded in more than 28 U.S. states. In 1995, Wilson released a song, “.U”, for Contract Recording Company. A year later, Wilson released the song, “Turn Around” for Da Bridge Records.

In late 1999, a proposal to unite all former living Supremes for a summer 2000 tour, was negotiated by Ross and SFX. After securing SFX’s interest, Ross had the promoter contact the other former members, refusing to directly negotiate with the other members, in order to spare any hurt feelings among the women. Talks and plans for the tour were well underway before Wilson was contacted by Ross in December 1999. Wilson upset she had been contacted so late, wanted to speak with Ross directly before beginning negotiations. Ross felt they should speak after negotiations took place. Following Ross’s initial contact, she removed herself from the negotiations leaving them between the women, their representatives, and the promoters. Both Wilson and Ross knew that the real heart of The Supremes was the trio that included the very creator of the group, Florence Ballard. Despite the hard knowledge of show business realities, without Ballard negotiations could only be half-hearted in such a return to the group’s past formulations. Still, pushing on, TNA/SFX initially offered Wilson $1 million. Birdsong was reported to have been offered less than $1 million. Wilson and Birdsong were also informed they would not have any creative input into the show. Wilson rejected the initial offer feeling she, Ross, and Birdsong should be paid equally and have equal input into the show. Promoters increased Wilson’s offer up to $2 million after the initial rejection. Ross then agreed to offer Wilson another $2 million from her personal finances added to the $2 million TNA/SFX proposed for a total of $4 million. Wilson and Birdsong’s request for creative input into the show was again rejected. Ross stipulated that all of the other artists’ fees were guaranteed, meaning that they’d receive the full amount of their contracts, regardless of how many performances actually took place.

Wilson erroneously stated publicly that Ross was to receive between $15 to $20 million. Ross, as the tour’s co-producer, was receiving $500,000 per night from TNA/SFX to cover the tour’s expenses. When the expenses exceeded the allotment, Ross covered the overages. Wilson’s final offer of $4 million and Birdsong’s offer of $1 million came with a deadline of early 2000 (in order to begin production of the sets, costume fittings, hiring of staff, etc., and an on-schedule commencement of the tour). Wilson did accept the final offer, but her acceptance was rejected by TNA/SFX citing “the train has left the station.” The promoter ceased negotiations with Wilson and Birdsong. Without Wilson or Birdsong, Ross began to question whether to continue to stage the tour. Berry Gordy Jr. had called TNA/SFX during the negotiation process requesting that Wilson and Birdsong receive better pay and have creative input into the show. Ross contacted Gordy for advice about the tour and he reportedly told her to continue “if it’s something she’d have fun doing;” however, he warned her about continuing without Wilson and Birdsong. Ross decided to continue. The tour, Return to Love, instead went forward with former 1970s Supremes Scherrie Payne and Lynda Lawrence (Susaye Green and Jean Terrell refused to participate because the promoter requested that they audition for the tour, as they had not heard the women sing in over 20 years), but, was canceled mid-tour due low ticket sales (despite selling out New York City’s Madison Square Garden ), following complaints of high ticket prices in a down touring market, a spate of high scrutiny by some members of the public, and press regarding the absence of some performers (i.e. Wilson and Birdsong), and the dispute between versions of events. That year, Wilson released an updated version of her autobiographies as a single combined book. That same year, an album, I Am Changing, was released by Mary Wilson Enterprises, produced through her and her then-management, Duryea Entertainment.

In 2001, Wilson starred in the national tour of Leader of the Pack – The Ellie Greenwich Story. A year later, Wilson was appointed by Secretary of State Colin Powell as a “culture-connect ambassador” for the U.S. State Department, appearing at international events arranged by that agency. In 2006, a live concert DVD, Mary Wilson Live at the Sands, was released. Four years later, another DVD, Mary Wilson: Live from San Francisco… Up Close, was released. During this period, Wilson became a musical activist, having been part of the Truth in Music Bill, a law proposed to stop impostor groups performing under the names of the 1950s and 1960s rock and roll groups, including Motown groups The Marvelettes and The Supremes. The law was passed in 27 states. Wilson also toured and lectured internationally, as well as across the United States, speaking to multiple groups worldwide. Her lecture series, “Dare to Dream”, focuses on reaching goals and triumph over adversity. Wilson’s charity work included the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, the American Cancer Society, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, the Easter Seals Foundation, UNICEF, The NAACP, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the All-Star Network, and Figure Skaters of Harlem, a youth organization devoted to helping children towards entering the Olympics. Most recently, Wilson became the Mine Action spokesperson for the Humpty Dumpty Institute.

 

For more on Mary Wilson, please click on the link below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wilson_(singer)

Credit: Wikipedia.org

Zager and Evans – In the Year 2525

This bleak futuristic tale is a very unusual song, but 1969 was a very unusual year, with hippie anthems like “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” going to #1 along with bubblegum songs like “Sugar, Sugar.” The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and The Temptations all had classic #1s, but “In the Year 2525” stayed at #1 for six weeks, which was longer than any other song that year and earned it the distinction of #1 record of the year 1969. The song reflected the apprehension of the times and also the wonder of technology: it started its run at the top of the US chart the week before the Apollo 11 moon landing.

This was the only hit for the Nebraska folk-rock duo of Denny Zager and Rick Evans. Their follow-up single, “Mister Turnkey,” failed to chart and in 1971, they released their third and final album. Evans was their primary songwriter and wrote this one.

Here is the timeline of why this science fiction-themed song was the #1 hit of 1969:

March 1969 – two futuristic sci-fi movies receive Oscars: Planet Of The Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

July 11, 1969 – David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” (the tale of Major Tom) is released in the UK. It doesn’t become a chart-topper until September.

Week ending July 12, 1969 – “In the Year 2525” hits #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

July 16, 1969 – Apollo 11 Moon Mission lifts off from Florida.

July 20, 1969 – Apollo 11 astronauts make history when they set foot on the moon. 

Time magazine speculated that this was “composed by a computer at the Rand Corporation.”

The song was subtitled “Exordium & Terminus,” which is a fancy way of saying “Beginning & End.” The song took itself quite seriously in its description of what will become of man as technology takes over.

After this hit the top spot in both the US and UK, it put Zager & Evans at the very bottom of the alphabetical list of artists with a chart-topping song. In the UK, they held down the bottom until 2015, when David Zowie hit #1 with “House Every Weekend.” In America, that spot was taken the next year by Zayn with “Pillowtalk.”This

Song Lyrics –

In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find
In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545
You ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you
In the year 5555
Your arms hangin’ limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin’ to do
Some machines doin’ that for you
In the year 6565
You won’t need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

In the year 7510
If God’s a-coming, He oughta make it by then
Maybe He’ll look around Himself and say
Guess it’s time for the judgment day
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down, and start again

In the year 9595
I’m kinda wonderin’ if man is gonna be alive
He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing

Now it’s been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what, he never knew, now man’s reign is through
But through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight
So very far away, maybe it’s only yesterday

In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find

Writer/s: RICHARD LEE EVANS

The Box Tops – The Letter

 

This song is about a guy who gets a letter from his former love telling him that she wants him back, and the guy wants to fly out and see her immediately. The Nashville songwriter Wayne Carson Thompson wrote the song after his father gave him the line, “Give me a ticket for an aeroplane.”

Thompson gave the song to The Box Tops on the recommendation of his friend, Chips Moman, who ran ARS Studios and liked the sound of an unnamed band headed by then-16-year-old Alex Chilton, who auditioned for him in 1967.

Thompson played guitar on the recording. He didn’t like the singing, believing the lead vocal was too husky and wasn’t fond of the production either. The addition of the jet sound “didn’t make sense” to him. When producer Dan Penn added the airplane sound to the recording, Wayne Carson Thompson clearly thought that Penn had lost his mind. He hadn’t – several weeks later it became one of the biggest records of the ’60s, and The Box Tops went on to score with a few other Thompson compositions, including their follow-up release, “Neon Rainbow” (#24, 1967), “Soul Deep” (a #18 hit in 1969) and “You Keep Tightening Up On Me” (their last chart hit, which peaked at #74 in 1970). A few years later, Thompson won a Grammy for co-writing the hit “Always On My Mind.”

When the group recorded this they still did not have a name. One band member suggested, “Let’s have a contest and everybody can send in 50 cents and a box top.” Producer Dan Penn then dubbed them The Box Tops.

At 1:58, the Box Tops’ version of this was the last #1 hit to be shorter than two minutes in length.

Cover versions were US hits for two other artists, The Arbors (#20 in 1969 – arrangement by Joe Scott) and Joe Cocker (#7 in 1970). Cocker’s version is a live recording featuring Leon Russell; a studio version appears on his album Mad Dogs & Englishmen.

The title is never sung in this song: his baby writes him “a letter.”

Song Lyrics – 

[Chorus]
Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby, just-a wrote me a letter

I don’t care how much money I gotta spend
Got to get back to baby again
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-going’ home
My baby, just-a wrote me a letter

Well, she wrote me a letter
Said she couldn’t live without me no more
Listen, mister, can’t you see I got to get back
To my baby once-a more
Anyway, yeah!

[Chorus]

Well, she wrote me a letter
Said she couldn’t live without me no more
Listen, mister, can’t you see I got to get back
To my baby once-a more
Anyway, yeah!

Credit: songfacts.com

Video credit: YouTube.com

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“Charley Pride, The Man, The Music, The Legend!”

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In the early 1960s, a young minor league baseball pitcher and aspiring country singer named Charley Pride had settled into a discouraging routine. His days were spent toiling in Helena, Mont., at a smelter operated by the Anaconda Copper Mining Co., and he spent his free time playing for its semipro baseball team, the East Helena Smelteries.

He stood out as an African American working in a musical genre that seldom welcomed black voices. But he developed a small but enthusiastic fan base singing in Montana honky-tonks, which in 1962 led to his invitation to perform before a show headlined by country singers Red Sovine and Red Foley.

After Mr. Pride sang “Heartaches By the Numbers” and “Lovesick Blues,” Sovine, a veteran performer, was struck by Mr. Pride’s magnetism and the enthusiastic response he evoked from the White audience. He suggested that Mr. Pride take his chances in Nashville.

It took him nearly two years to get a contract. Record executives loved his demo tapes but got cold feet after viewing his picture. In one audition, he was told, “Now sing in your regular voice.” A talent scout even suggested that Mr. Pride sell himself as a novelty by dressing in Colonial garb and adopting the stage name of George Washington Carver III. Finally, country guitarist Chet Atkins, who was also an RCA Records executive, saw promise in the singer.

Radio stations received his first singles, credited to Country Charley Pride, without publicity photos — a cautious move by Atkins. Disc jockeys latched onto the records, and country fans listened. “It was RCA’s decision not to play up or down the color thing, but to just let the voice go, put the record out, and let the people decide,” Mr. Pride later told The Washington Post.

Mr. Pride, who grew up in the Mississippi cotton fields and became the first major African American singing star in country music, died Dec. 12 at 86 in Dallas. The cause was complications from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a statement from the Nashville public relations firm 2911 Media.

Harmonica player DeFord Bailey, who was black, had been one of the earliest and most popular cast members of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s. A generation later, soul stars Ray Charles and Solomon Burke recorded country songs. But Mr. Pride shattered a show-business barrier, paving the way for subsequent black entertainers — Stoney Edwards, Big Al Downing, and Darius Rucker, among them — who followed Mr. Pride’s lead in Nashville.

Country-music historian Rich Kienzle said Mr. Pride embraced a traditional sound: recording with fiddles and steel guitar in an era when many country singers were trying to sound like Las Vegas entertainers. Onstage, he also liked to defuse tension with self-deprecating, sometimes self-demeaning humor.

“He would make jokes to audiences about having a ‘permanent tan,’

” Kienzle said. “The music won out over any bigotry.”

He often turned down songs that he believed were too controversial. One such song, “Blackjack County Chain,” by songwriter Red Lane, recounted a chain gang beating a sadistic sheriff to death. After Mr. Pride rejected it, his frequent touring mate, Willie Nelson, later recorded it.

Mr. Pride often endured cruel jokes and taunts from fellow entertainers. George Jones once drunkenly painted “KKK” on Mr. Pride’s car. (Mr. Pride had passed out at a party while trying to match Jones, an alcoholic, drink for drink.)

Early in his recording career, Mr. Pride’s manager, Jack Johnson, set up a private jam session with singer Faron Young, co-owner of a widely read trade journal Music City News. Young, known for badgering colleagues with profanity and provocative insults, praised Mr. Pride’s singing but referred to him with a racial epithet.

“In all honesty, it took longer for the Nashville crowd to become accustomed to me than I thought it would,” Mr. Pride recalled in his 1994 memoir, “Pride,” written with Jim Henderson. “I was a novelty, but I never allowed myself to feel out of place. Unless someone else brought it up — that I was different — I tried not to think about it much.”

Charley Frank Pride was born in Sledge, Miss., on March 18, 1934, and was the fourth of 11 children in a family of sharecroppers. His father named him Charl but, because of a clerical error, the “ey” was added to his birth certificate.

“We lived in what we called a ‘shotgun house’ and there was a bed over on this side and a bed over on this side, and we’d sleep three and four to a bed,” Mr. Pride told Dan Rather on AXS-TV’s “The Big Interview” in 2015. “I remember sometimes I’d wake up, and my brother’s toes were right in my nose.”

Mr. Pride’s fascination with country music began early during his childhood in the Mississippi Delta. Though the region is best known for its blues, his strict and religious father regarded the genre as the devil’s music. Instead, Mr. Pride recalled listening to the Grand Ole Opry and a local country station on the family’s battery-run Philco radio.

“My dad was in charge of the dials on the radio, so that’s what we listened to,” Mr. Pride once said. “In my formative years, country music was what I heard. I got to be 10 or 11 years old before I started listening to other music. By the time I experienced the blues, I was in my teens.”

Mr. Pride bought his first guitar at 14, but baseball competed with music as a consuming passion.

“As far as I was concerned, my future was in baseball,” he wrote in his memoir. “I saw what Jackie Robinson did, that was my goal. Before he reached the major leagues, there were no real role models for kids like us.”

Throughout the 1950s, Mr. Pride pitched for Negro leagues teams, minor league affiliates of major league teams, and occasionally in exhibition games against barnstorming major league players. At one point while he was playing in the Negro leagues, he and a teammate were traded for a used team bus.

The Army drafted Mr. Pride in 1958. After his discharge two years later, he joined Anaconda.

In his memoir, Mr. Pride spoke of struggles with manic depression. He also invested in many failed business ventures. However, his music management company prospered by discovering new talents Ronnie Millsap and Gary Stewart and bringing both to RCA Records. In 2010, he became a minority owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Mr. Pride was voted entertainer of the year by the Country Music Association in 1971. He received a Grammy for his 1971 album, “Charley Pride Sings Heart Songs.” He won additional Grammys at the 1971 ceremony for two gospel songs, “Did You Think to Pray” and “Let Me Live.”

In 1956, he married Rozene Cohran. In addition to his wife, survivors include three children, reggae musician Carlton Pride; Dion Pride, a country singer; and Angela Pride; four siblings; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Mr. Pride credited his early experiences with giving him an unflinching determination to succeed.

“When I used to go to school and pledge allegiance to the flag, all those nice words about ‘liberty and justice for all,’ I just had to look out my window: We had to play basketball outside while the whites had a gym,” he told The Post in 1984. “But my mother told me to hang in there, that someday it would be different, and that kept me believing.”

credit:washingtonpost.com

 

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Judy Garland – “Over the Rainbow”

How many of you still sit and watch the Wizard of Oz each time it’s televised, or have the movie in your collection?  I have this great movie but I still enjoy watching it on television.  Not only is it the anticipation leading up to the start of the movie, but it takes me back to the first time I saw it and believed there was somewhere in the world this beautiful, with talking apple trees, flying witches, & monkeys; but most of all, as a child, I wanted to believe that the Wizard was a real person & Oz was a place, where all dreams could come true!  As I grew older and my mom told me the truth, I still loved the movie and still do as an adult.  I no longer believe in talking apple trees, flying monkeys, witches, or a place called Oz with a Wizard, but I do believe that if you dare to dream, set goals, work hard to accomplish them, your dreams can and will come true! 

Written for the movie The Wizard Of Oz, this song was used early in the film when Dorothy (played by Judy Garland) longs to escape her dreary life on the farm in Kansas. A deeper interpretation can have Dorothy longing for heaven.

The music was written by Harold Arlen, with lyrics by Yip Harburg. They were asked to write this based on their previous hits, “It’s Only A Paper Moon,” “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime,” and “Lydia The Tattooed Lady.”

Arlen came up with the melody while sitting in his car in front of the original Schwab’s Drug Store in Hollywood. Harburg hated it at first because he thought it was too slow. After Arlen consulted with Ira Gershwin, he sped up the tempo and Harburg came up with the words.

The original title was “Over the Rainbow is where I want to be.”

A lot of effort went into the first line. Ideas that didn’t make the cut included “I’ll go over the rainbow” and “Someday over the rainbow.”

Some of the artists who recorded this include Glenn Miller, Bob Crosby, and Larry Clinton. >>

The lyrics have a political significance. Harburg was expressing hope for America under President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program, which was designed to get America out of the Great Depression in the early ’30s.

This was almost cut from the movie. Some executives from MGM thought the film was too long and wanted this removed. They thought it slowed down the action too early in the movie.

This won an Oscar in 1939 for Best Original Song. Garland was urged to sing it when she accepted the award. She did but had a hard time getting through it because she was so excited.

The film was nominated for 6 Oscars but had the misfortune of being released the same year as Gone With The Wind, which won Best Picture. The Wizard Of Oz won only for this and Best Score, which was written by Herbert Stothart.

The movie was bought with the intention of having Judy Garland play Dorothy, but then executives switched it to Shirley Temple after Judy was already given the role. Fox would not release Shirley Temple from her contract nor could she hit the notes to the songs.

In a 2001 poll conducted by the Recording Industry Association Of America and the National Endowment for the Arts, this was voted the #1 song of all time. The RIAA has it #1 on their list of the “Songs of the Century,” because of its historical significance.

During his 2001 world tour, Eric Clapton was known to play an acoustic blues version of this.

Tori Amos covers this at many of her concerts and did a version of her 1996 MTV Unplugged concert.

Liza Minnelli, who is Garland’s daughter, sang some of this to Michael Jackson at his 2001 tribute special.

Harry Connick Jr. sang this at the closing ceremonies of the 2002 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Dorothy Hamill skated while he sang.

Hawaiian ukulele musician Israel Kamakawiwo’ole recorded this in a medley with “What A Wonderful World” for his 1993 album Facing Forward. This version was used in the films Finding Forrester, Meet Joe Black, and 50 First Dates, as well as on the television show ER. Kamakawiwo’ole, more often known as IZ, was very obese, weighing about 750 pounds at one point, and he died from respiratory illness connected with his weight. His coffin rests in the capitol building in Honolulu, the only non-politician of only 3 people to be honored like this. The Hawaiian state flag flew at half-mast on the day of his funeral and thousands of fans came to see his ashes scattered into the ocean.

This song was used in an episode of the TV series Scrubs, where it was performed by Ted’s band “The Worthless Peons.” The “Worthless Peons” are played by the real-life band “The Blanks.”

In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts named this the top song of the 20th century, beating out “White Christmas,” which came in at #2. 

Surprisingly, Judy Garland’s original version has never featured on the singles chart. Two subsequent renditions of the song did make the Hot 100. Former American Idol finalist Katharine McPhee peaked at #12 with her interpretation of the song in 2006 and in 2012 The Voice contestant Nicholas David reached #96 after performing the song on the singing contest. Both versions went under the title of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Pink performed this song at the Oscars in 2014 in honor of Judy Garland, who was honored at the ceremony.

Some versions include the original introductory verse that was not included in the film:

Song Lyrics –

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high
There’s a land that I’ve heard of once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream,
Really do come true.

Someday I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
High above the chimney tops,
That’s where you’ll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can’t I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can’t I?

 

Written by: Yip Harburg

Credit: songfacts.com

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The Impressions – “Gypsy Woman”

 

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A beautifully written song that is a fantasy that one can’t help but see in their own imagination as the lyrics lay out each detail of this man’s love and desire for the woman of his dreams.  I love the Impressions version, but it is Bryan Hyland’s version that I remember and fell in love with during my teenage years!  I’ve added Bryan’s version of this song as well.

Written by lead singer Curtis Mayfield, this song is about a man who is part of a traveling caravan who falls in love with a gypsy they encounter along the way. Mayfield was probably inspired by the Western movies he enjoyed.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the biggest hit featuring castanets, which keep the rhythm and play to the gypsy theme.

This was the first song The Impressions recorded without Jerry Butler, who fronted the group in the ’50s but left for a solo career. Curtis Mayfield kept working with Butler as a guitarist and songwriter, and when Mayfield wrote “Gypsy Woman,” he regrouped The Impressions and recorded the song with them, taking over for Butler as their frontman. The song was a hit and The Impressions soon became regular chart-dwellers, racking up 30 more Hot 100 entries in the ’60s.

According to Curtis Mayfield, it was the group’s manager Eddie Thomas (who named the act, telling them “you gotta make an impression”), that got this song onto the radio. Thomas would personally stop by radio stations and peddle the song. He got some takers in Philadelphia, and when the song got some attention in that market, it took off elsewhere.

In 1970, this became the last hit for Brian Hyland, when he took the song to #3 in the US. Hyland’s biggest hit was “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.”

Credit: YouTube.com

From nowhere through a caravan
Around the campfire light
A lovely woman in motion
With hair as dark as night
Her eyes were like that of a cat in the dark
That hypnotized me with love

She was a gypsy woman,
She was a gypsy woman

She danced round and round to a guitar melody
From the fire, her face was all aglow
How she enchanted me
Oh, how I’d like to hold her near
And kiss and forever whisper in her ear

I love you, gypsy woman
I love you, gypsy woman

All through the caravan
She was dancing with all the men
Waiting for the rising sun
Everyone was having fun
I hate to see the lady go
Knowing she’ll never know
That I love her, I love her

She was a gypsy woman
A gypsy woman, a gypsy woman, a gypsy woman

Writer/s: Curtis L. Mayfield

Laura Nyro – An American Singer, Songwriter, and Pianist

 

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Laura Nyro (/ˈnɪəroʊ/ NEER-oh; born Laura Nigro, October 18, 1947 – April 8, 1997) was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist. She achieved critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (1968) and New York Tendaberry (1969), and had commercial success with artists such as Barbra Streisand and The 5th Dimension recording her songs. Her style was a hybrid of Brill Building-style New York pop, jazz, rhythm and blues, show tunes, rock, and soul. She was praised for her strong emotive vocal style and 3-octave mezzo-soprano vocal range.

Between 1968 and 1970, a number of artists had hits with her songs: The 5th Dimension with “Blowing Away,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Sweet Blindness,” and “Save the Country;” Blood, Sweat & Tears and Peter, Paul and Mary, with “And When I Die;” Three Dog Night and Maynard Ferguson, with “Eli’s Comin;” and Barbra Streisand with “Stoney End,” “Time and Love,” and “Hands off the Man (Flim Flam Man).” Nyro’s best-selling single was her recording of Carole King‘s and Gerry Goffin‘s “Up on the Roof“

Nyro was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

Early life

Nyro was born Laura Nigro in the Bronx, the daughter of Louis Nigro, a piano tuner and jazz trumpeter, and Gilda (née Mirsky) Nigro, a bookkeeper. Laura had a younger brother, Jan Nigro, who has become a well-known children’s musician. Laura was of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent, with Italian ancestry from her paternal grandfather.

“I’ve created my own little world, a world of music since I was five years old,” Nyro told Billboard magazine in 1970, adding that music provided, for her, a means of coping with a difficult childhood: “I was never a bright and happy child.”  As a child, Nyro taught herself piano, read poetry, and listened to her mother’s records by Leontyne Price, Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, and classical composers such as Debussy and Ravel. She composed her first songs at age eight. With her family, she spent summers in the Catskills, where her father played trumpet at resorts. She credited the Sunday school at the New York Society for Ethical Culture with providing the basis of her education; she also attended Manhattan’s High School of Music & Art.

Nyro was close to her aunt and uncle, artists Theresa Bernstein and William Meyerowitz, who helped support her education and early career.

While in high school, she sang with a group of friends in subway stations and on street corners. She said, “I would go out singing, as a teenager, to a party or out on the street, because there were harmony groups there, and that was one of the joys of my youth. Nyro commented: “I was always interested in the social consciousness of certain songs. My mother and grandfather were progressive thinkers, so I felt at home in the peace movement and the women’s movement, and that has influenced my music.

Early career

Louis Nigro’s work brought him into contact with record company executive Artie Mogull and his partner Paul Barry, who auditioned Laura in 1966 and became her first manager. However, Nigro later said he did “not even once” mention Laura to any of his clients, adding “they would have laughed at me if I did.

As a teenager, Laura went by various surnames. She just happened to be using “Nyro” at the time she was discovered, and it stuck.

Mogull had negotiated her a recording and management contract, and she recorded her debut album, More Than a New Discovery, for the Verve Folkways label (later re-named Verve Forecast). Later, other songs from the album became hits for The 5th Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Barbra Streisand.

On July 13, 1966, Laura Nyro recorded “Stoney End” and “Wedding Bell Blues”, as well as an early version of “Time and Love”, as part of More Than A New Discovery at Bell Sounds Studios, 237 West 54th Street, Manhattan. About a month later, she sold “And When I Die” to Peter, Paul, and Mary for $5,000. On September 17, 1966, Laura Nyro and Verve-Folkways released “Wedding Bell Blues”/”Stoney End” as a single. “Wedding Bell Blues” became a minor hit, especially on the west coast. She completed More Than A New Discovery in New York on November 29, 1966, and, starting on January 16, 1967, Laura Nyro made her first extended professional appearance at age 19, performing nightly for about a month at the “hungry i” coffeehouse in San Francisco. In February 1967, Verve Folkways released More Than A New Discovery. On March 4, 1967, Laura Nyro appeared on Clay Cole’s Diskoteck, Episode 7.23, along with Dion and the Belmonts and others, but unfortunately, the recording of that episode is lost. On March 21, 1967, she appeared on TV Show Where the Action Is, Episode 3.140 with videos of “Wedding Bell Blues” (partially extant), “Blowin’ Away” (lost), and “Goodbye Joe” (lost).

On June 17, 1967, Nyro appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival. Although some accounts described her performance as a fiasco that culminated in her being booed off the stage, recordings later made publicly available contradict this version of events.

Soon afterward, David Geffen approached Mogull about taking over as Nyro’s agent. Nyro successfully sued to void her management and recording contracts on the grounds that she had entered into them while still a minor. Geffen became her manager, and the two established a publishing company, Tuna Fish Music, under which the proceeds from her future compositions would be divided equally between them. Geffen also arranged Nyro’s new recording contract with Clive Davis at Columbia Records and purchased the publishing rights to her early compositions. In his memoir Clive: Inside the Record Business, Davis recalled Nyro’s audition for him: She’d invited him to her New York apartment, turned off every light except that of a television set next to her piano, and played him the material that would become Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. Around this time, Nyro considered becoming the lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears, after the departure of founder Al Kooper, but was dissuaded by Geffen. Blood, Sweat & Tears would go on to have a hit with a cover of Nyro’s “And When I Die”.

The new contract allowed Nyro more artistic freedom and control. In 1968, Columbia released Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, her second album, which received high critical praise for the depth and sophistication of its performance and arrangements, which merged pop structure with inspired imagery, rich vocals, and avant-garde jazz, and is widely considered to be one of her best works. Eli was followed in 1969 by New York Tendaberry, another highly acclaimed work which cemented Nyro’s artistic credibility. “Time and Love” and “Save the Country” emerged as two of her most well-regarded and popular songs in the hands of other artists. During the weekend after Thanksgiving in November 1969, she gave two concerts at Carnegie Hall. Her own recordings sold mostly to a faithful cadre of followers. This prompted Clive Davis, in his memoir, to note that her recordings, as solid as they were, came to resemble demonstrations for other performers.

In 1969 Verve re-issued Nyro’s debut album as The First Songs. The same year Geffen and Nyro sold Tuna Fish Music to CBS for $4.5 million. Under the terms of his partnership with Nyro, Geffen received half of the proceeds of the sale, making them both millionaires.

Nyro’s fourth album, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat was released at the end of 1970. The set contained “Upstairs By a Chinese Lamp” and “When I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag” and featured Duane Allman and other Muscle Shoals, musicians. The following year’s Gonna Take a Miracle was a collection of Nyro’s favorite “teenage heartbeat songs”, recorded with vocal group Labelle (Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash) and the production team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. With the exception of her attribution of “Désiree” (originally “Deserie” by The Charts), this was Nyro’s sole album of wholly non-original material, featuring such songs as “Jimmy Mack“, “Nowhere to Run“, and “Spanish Harlem“.

In 1971, David Geffen worked to establish his own recording label, Asylum Records, in part because of the difficulties he had encountered in trying to secure a recording contract for another of his clients, Jackson Browne (with whom Nyro was in a relationship at the time). Geffen invited Nyro to join the new label and announced that she would be Asylum’s first signing, but shortly before the official signing was due to take place, Geffen discovered that Nyro had changed her mind and re-signed with Columbia instead, without giving him prior notice of her decision. When interviewed about the matter for a 2012 PBS documentary on his life, Geffen, who considered Nyro his best friend, described Nyro’s rejection as the biggest betrayal of his life up until that point, noting that he “cried for days” afterward.

By the end of 1971, Nyro was married to carpenter David Bianchini. She was reportedly uncomfortable with attempts to market her as a celebrity and she announced her retirement from the music business at the age of 24. In 1973 her Verve debut album was reissued as The First Songs by Columbia Records.

Later career – 

By 1976, her marriage had ended, and she released an album of new material, Smile. She then embarked on a four-month tour with a full band, which resulted in the 1977 live album Season of Lights.

After the 1978 album Nested, recorded when she was pregnant with her only child, she again took a break from recording, this time until 1984’s Mother’s Spiritual. She began touring with a band in 1988, her first concert appearances in 10 years. The tour was dedicated to the animal rights movement. The shows led to her 1989 release, Laura: Live at the Bottom Line, which included six new compositions.

Her final album of predominantly original material, Walk the Dog and Light the Light (1993), her last album for Columbia, was co-produced by Gary Katz, best known for his work with Steely Dan. The release sparked reappraisal of her place in popular music, and new commercial offers began appearing. She turned down lucrative film-composing offers, although she contributed a rare protest song to the Academy Award-winning documentary Broken Rainbow, about the unjust relocation of the Navajo people.

Nyro performed increasingly in the 1980s and 1990s with female musicians, including her friend Nydia “Liberty” Mata, a drummer, and several others from the lesbian-feminist women’s music subculture, such as members of the band Isis. During this period, Nyro made appearances at such venues as the 1989 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and the 1989 Newport Folk Festival, of which a CD containing portions of her performance was released. On July 4, 1991, she opened for Bob Dylan at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.  Among her last performances were at Union Chapel, Islington, London, England in November 1994; The New York Bottom Line Christmas Eve Show in 1994; and at McCabe’s in Los Angeles on February 11 and 12, 1995.

Both The Tonight Show and the Late Show with David Letterman staffs heavily pursued Nyro for a TV appearance during this period, yet she turned them down as well, citing her discomfort with appearing on television (she made only a handful of early TV appearances and one fleeting moment on VH-1 performing the title song from Broken Rainbow on Earth Day in 1990). According to producer Gary Katz, she also turned down a request to be the musical guest on the 1993 season opener of Saturday Night Live. She never released an official video, although there was talk of filming some The Bottom Line appearances in the 1990s.

Personal life – 

Nyro was bisexual, though this fact was only known to her closest friends. She had a relationship with singer/songwriter Jackson Browne in late 1970 to early 1971. Browne was Nyro’s opening act at the time.

Nyro married Vietnam War veteran David Bianchini in October 1971 after a whirlwind romance and spent the next three years living with him in a small town in Massachusetts. The marriage ended after three years, during which time she had grown accustomed to rural life, as opposed to the life in the city, where she had recorded her first five records.

After Nyro split from Bianchini in 1975, she suffered the trauma of the death of her mother Gilda to ovarian cancer at the age of 49. She consoled herself largely by recording a new album, enlisting Charlie Calello, with whom she had collaborated on Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.

In 1978, a short-lived relationship with Harindra Singh produced a son, Gil Bianchini (also known as musician Gil-T), who she gave the surname of her ex-husband.

In the early 1980s, Nyro began living with painter Maria Desiderio (1954–1999), a relationship that lasted 17 years, the rest of Nyro’s life.

Nyro was a feminist and openly discussed it on a number of occasions, once saying, “I may bring a certain feminist perspective to my songwriting because that’s how I see life.

By the late 1980s, Nyro had become an animal rights activist and vegetarian and began to offer literature on the subject at her concerts.

Death – 

In late 1996, Nyro, like her mother, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. After the diagnosis, Columbia Records, with Nyro’s involvement, prepared a two-CD retrospective of material from her years at the label. She lived to see the release of Stoned Soul Picnic: The Best of Laura Nyro in 1997.

She died of ovarian cancer in Danbury, Connecticut, on April 8, 1997, at 49, the same age at which her mother died. Her ashes were scattered beneath a maple tree on the grounds of her house in Danbury.

Legacy

Posthumous releases – 

Nyro’s posthumous releases include Angel In The Dark (2001), which includes her final studio recordings made in 1994 and 1995, and The Loom’s Desire (2002), a set of live recordings with solo piano and harmony singers from The Bottom Line Christmas shows of 1993 and 1994.

Influence – 

Nyro’s influence on popular musicians has also been acknowledged by such artists as Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Tori Amos, Patti Smith, Kate Bush, Diamanda Galas, Bette Midler, Rickie Lee Jones, Elton John, Jackson Browne, Alice Cooper,  Elvis Costello, Cyndi Lauper, Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan, Sarah Cracknell, Melissa Manchester, Lisa Germano, and Rosanne Cash.

Todd Rundgren stated that once he heard her, he “stopped writing songs like The Who and started writing songs like Laura.

Cyndi Lauper acknowledged that her rendition of the song “Walk On By“, on her Grammy Award-nominated 2003 cover album, At Last, was inspired by Nyro.

Elton John and Elvis Costello discussed Nyro’s influence on both of them during the premiere episode of Costello’s interview show Spectacle. When asked by the host if he could name three great performers/songwriters who have largely been ignored, he cited Nyro as one of his choices. Elton John also addressed Nyro’s influence on his 1970 song “Burn Down the Mission“, from Tumbleweed Connection, in particular. “I idolized her,” he concluded. “The soul, the passion, just the out and out audacity of the way her rhythmic and melody changes came was like nothing I’ve heard before.

Bruce Arnold, leader of the pioneering soft rock group Orpheus was a fan of Nyro’s music and like her, worked with legendary studio drummer Bernard Purdie. While recording with Purdie, Arnold mentioned his love of Nyro’s music; the drummer responded with a story about Nyro: At Nyro’s home one night in the late 1970s, Purdie mentioned that he had been the uncredited drummer for Orpheus. Nyro got excited and brought him into a room where she kept her record collection. She pulled out well-worn copies of every Orpheus LP, as well as copies sealed for posterity.

Diane Paulus and Bruce Buschel co-created Eli’s Comin’, a musical revue of the songs of Nyro, which, among others, starred Anika Noni Rose.

Louis Greenstein and Kate Ferber wrote “One Child Born: The Music of Laura Nyro,” a one-woman show featuring Ferber and directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt. “One Child Born” was developed at CAP21 in New York City and has sold out Joe’s Pub and the Laurie Beechman Theatre in New York, World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, and other venues.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the National Ballet of Canada have also included her music in their performances; notably, “Been On A Train” from Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, in which a woman describes watching her lover die from a drug overdose, comprises the second movement of Ailey’s 1971 solo for Judith Jamison, Cry.

On October 2, 2007, three-time Tony nominee Judy Kuhn released her new album Serious Playground: The Songs of Laura Nyro. The album, which debuted as a concert to a sold-out house at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook Series in January 2007, includes several of Nyro’s biggest hits (“Stoned Soul Picnic”, “Stoney End”) as well as some of her lesser-known gems.

In 1992, the English shoegaze/Britpop band Lush released a song about Laura Nyro (“Laura”) on their first full-length album Spooky. Several of the band’s songs (specifically those written by Emma Anderson) have echoed Nyro’s music in their titles – “When I Die”, “Single Girl”. More recently, in 2012, Anderson has referred to Laura Nyro as “wondrous” on her Twitter account.

On her 2006 album Build a Bridge, the operatic/Broadway soprano Audra McDonald included covers of Nyro’s songs “To a Child” and “Tom Cat Goodbye”.

The musical theater composer Stephen Schwartz credits Nyro as a major influence on his work.

Alice Cooper has mentioned on his syndicated radio show that Laura Nyro is one of his favorite songwriters.

Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, when promoting her 2006 solo album Rabbit Fur Coat repeatedly cited Nyro’s 1971 album Gonna Take a Miracle as a big influence on her music. Lewis performed the first track on that album “I Met Him on a Sunday” on the Rabbit Fur Coat tour.

In the 2004 drama film A Home at the End of the World can be heard Nyro’s recordings of “Désiree” and “It’s Gonna Take a Miracle”, both songs from the album Gonna Take a Miracle.

Paul Shaffer, the bandleader for the CBS Orchestra and sidekick on the Late Show with David Letterman, stated that his desert island album would be Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.

Paul Stanley of Kiss has mentioned on several occasions that he is a big admirer of Nyro’s music.

Exene Cervenka of the punk rock band X listed Nyro as one of her favorite songwriters.

Biographies, analyses, and tributes – 

On October 27, 1997, a large-scale tribute concert was produced by women at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Performers included Rickie Lee Jones, Sandra Bernhard, Toshi Reagon, and Phoebe Snow. 

And a World to Carry On, an original tribute show celebrating the music and life of Laura Nyro, written by Barry Silber and Carole Coppinger, was first performed in 2008 (2nd performance late August 2015) at Carrollwood Players Theatre in Tampa, Fla.

To Carry On, an original tribute show celebrating the music and life of Laura Nyro, starring Mimi Cohen, is in its second return engagement as of January 19, 2011, at Cherry Lane Theatre in Manhattan.

A biography of Nyro, Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro, written by Michele Kort, was published in 2002 by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press.

An analysis of Nyro’s music by music theorist Ari Shagal was written at the University of Chicago in 2003, linking Nyro’s work to the Great American Songbook by demonstrating the similarities between her chordal language and those of Harold Arlen, Harry Warren, and George Shearing.

Nyro’s life and music were celebrated in a 2005 BBC Radio 2 documentary, Shooting Star – Laura Nyro Remembered, which was narrated by her friend Bette Midler and included contributions from her one-time manager David Geffen, co-producers Arif Mardin and Gary Katz, and performers Suzanne Vega and Janis Ian. It was rebroadcast on April 4, 2006.

Janis Ian, who attended the High School of Music and Art in New York at the same time as Nyro, discussed her friendship with Nyro during the late 1960s in her autobiography, Society’s Child. Ian described her as looking like a “Morticia Addams” caricature with her long, dark hair, and called her a “brilliant songwriter” but “oddly inarticulate” in terms of musical terminology. Ian was a fan of Nyro’s work with producer Charlie Calello and chose him as the producer of her 1969 album Who Really Cares on the basis of his work with Nyro.

Comedian, writer and singer Sandra Bernhard has spoken extensively of Laura Nyro as an ongoing inspiration. She dedicated a song, “The Woman I Could’ve Been” on Excuses for Bad Behavior (Part One), to her. She also sang Nyro’s “I Never Meant to Hurt You” in her film Without You I’m Nothing.

Rickie Lee Jones‘s album Pirates and songs such as “We Belong Together” and “Living It Up” are reminiscent of early Laura Nyro’s songs, and Jones acknowledged Nyro’s influence.

Todd Rundgren has also acknowledged the strong influence of Nyro’s 1960s music on his own songwriting. While a member of the pop group Nazz, his great admiration for Nyro led him to arrange a meeting with her (which took place shortly after she had recorded the Eli and the Thirteenth Confession LP). Nyro invited Rundgren to become the musical director of her backing group, but his commitments to Nazz obliged him to decline. Rundgren’s debut solo album Runt (1970) includes the strongly Nyro-influenced “Baby Let’s Swing” which was written about her and mentions her by name. Rundgren and Nyro remained friends for much of her professional career and he subsequently assisted her with the recording of her album Mother’s Spiritual.

On April 14, 2012, Laura Nyro was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The induction speech was delivered by singer Bette Midler and the award was accepted by her son, Gil Bianchini. The song “Stoney End” was performed by singer Sara Bareilles at the induction ceremony.

A hybrid daylily named for Laura Nyro was introduced in 2000.

The Scottish band Cosmic Rough Riders released a touching tribute song, “Laura Nyro,” on their 2001 album Pure Escapism.

The song “Mean Streets” by the band Tennis is a tribute to Nyro.

On July 22, 2014, composer/arranger Billy Childs released Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro. The album features ten Laura Nyro songs performed by a long list of stars including Rickie Lee Jones, Shawn Colvin, Alison Krauss, Dianne Reeves, and Wayne Shorter. The album was nominated for three Grammy’s, with the “New York Tendaberry” track featuring Renee Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma winning for Best Arrangement, Instrumental, and Vocals.

In 2015, The Christine Spero Group released “Spero Plays Nyro”, the Music of Laura Nyro along with a highly acclaimed live tour. The album features eleven of Nyro’s songs and an original song, “Laura and John” by Christine Spero, a tribute to Laura Nyro and John Coltrane, whom Nyro admired.

Credit: Wikipedia.com

Video credit: YouTube.com

Barbra Streisand – “Stoney End!”

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A beautifully written song of the 60s. Stoney End is the twelfth studio album by Barbra Streisand. Released in 1971, it was a conscious change in direction for Streisand with a more upbeat contemporary pop/rock sound and was produced by Richard Perry. The album peaked at #10 in the United States, her first to reach the top 10 in five years. The cover photography as taken at Sunrise Mountain, Nevada. Exerpt taken from Wikipedia.com

This was from Streisand’s first album of songs that weren’t from Broadway/film musicals and weren’t standards. On the album, she recorded two songs written by Laura Nyro, including “Stoney End.”

Producer Richard Perry looked at several Laura Nyro songs for Barbra Streisand to sing on her second Pop-Rock album. He selected this song and convinced Streisand to sing it, despite her not being comfortable with the line “I was raised on the good book, Jesus.” It was Streisand’s biggest Hot 100 hit until “Evergreen.”

Many of Streisand’s fans were initially bothered by this song because it had more of a rock feel, with heavy bass and drums and her searing vocal. It was Streisand’s biggest Pop/Rock hit until “Evergreen“ in 1976.

Richard Perry produced this album with Phil Ramone as the engineer. Ramone would later produce several Streisand albums.

Nyro recorded this in 1967 on her album “More Than a New Discovery.” In 1968, Peggy Lipton recorded it.

Credit: Songfacts.com

Song Lyrics –

I was born from love
And my poor mother worked the mines
I was raised on the Good Book Jesus
Till I read between the lines
Now I don’t believe

I wanna to see the morning
Going down the stoney end
I never wanted to go
Down the stoney end
Mama, let me start all over
Cradle me, Mama, cradle me again

And I can still remember him
With love light in his eyes
But the light flickered out and parted

As the sun began to rise
Now I don’t believe
I want to see the morning
Going down the stoney end
That I never wanted to go
Down the stoney end

Mama, let me start all over
Cradle me, Mama, cradle me again
(Cradle me, Mama, cradle me again
Mama, cradle me again)

Never mind the forecast
‘Cause the sky has lost control
‘Cause the furry and the broken thunders

Come to match my raging soul
Now I don’t believe
I wanna to see the morning
Going down the stoney end

I never wanted to go
Down the stoney and
Mama, let me start all over
Cradle me, Mama, cradle me again
(Going down the stoney end
I never wanted to go
I never wanted to go)

I never wanted to go
Mama
I never wanted to go

(Going down the stoney end
I never wanted to go
I never wanted to go)

Song Writer: LAURA NYRO

John Lester Nash Jr. aka “Johnny Nash”, The Texas Born Singer, Songwriter & First Non-Jamaican Artist to Record Reggae Music in Kingston!

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The music of the 70s & 80s were a huge part of growing up and hanging out with friends or attending sock-hops with class mates for many.  Johnny Nash’s music is part of the generation that I grew up listening to and appreciating its cleanliness. Adding Reggae to his music was such a smart move which introduced a different vibe to his music, and quickly caught on here in the United States.

John Lester Nash Jr. (August 19, 1940 – October 6, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter, best known in the United States for his 1972 hit “I Can See Clearly Now” Primarily a reggae and pop singer, he was one of the first non-Jamaican artists to record reggae music in Kingston.

 Early life – 

Nash was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Eliza (Armstrong) and John Lester Nash.  He sang in the choir at Progressive New Hope Baptist Church in South Central Houston as a child. Beginning in 1953, Nash sang covers of R&B hits on Matinee, a local variety show on KPRC-TV  from 1956 he sang on Arthur Godfrey‘s radio and television programs for a seven-year period. Nash was married three times and had two children.

Career – 

Signing with ABC-Paramount, Nash made his major-label debut in 1957 with the single “A Teenager Sings the Blues”. He had his first chart hit in early 1958 with a cover of Doris Day‘s “A Very Special Love” Marketed as a rival to Johnny Mathis, Nash also enjoyed success as an actor early in his career, appearing in the screen version of playwright Louis S. Peterson‘s Take a Giant Step in 1959. Nash won a Silver Sail Award for his performance from the Locarno International Film Festival. Nash continued releasing singles on a variety of labels such as Groove, Chess, Argo, and Warner Bros.

Nash sang the theme song to the syndicated animated cartoon series The Mighty Hercules, which ran on various television stations from 1963 to 1966.

In 1964, Nash and manager Danny Sims formed JoDa Records in New York. JoDa released The Cowsills‘ single “All I Really Want to Be Is Me.” Although JoDa filed for bankruptcy after only two years, Nash and Sims moved on to marketing American singers to Jamaica, owing to the low cost of recording in that country.

In 1965, Nash had a top five hit in the US Billboard R&B chart, the ballad “Let’s Move and Groove Together. That year, he and Sims moved to Jamaica. Their lawyer Newton Willoughby was the father of Jamaican radio host Neville Willoughby. After selling off his old entertainment assets in New York, Sims opened a new music publishing business in Jamaica, Cayman Music. Nash planned to try breaking the local rocksteady sound in the United States. Around 1966 or 1967, Neville Willoughby took Nash to a Rastafarian party where Bob Marley & The Wailing Wailers were performing. Members Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, and Rita Marley introduced Nash to the local music scene. Nash signed all four to an exclusive publishing contract with Cayman Music for J$50 a week.

In 1967, Nash, Arthur Jenkins, and Sims collaborated to create a new label, JAD Records (after their first names Johnny, Arthur, and Danny), and recorded their albums at Federal Records in Kingston. JAD released Nash’s rocksteady single “Hold Me Tight” in 1968; it became a top-five hit in both the U.S. and UK. In 1971, Nash scored another UK hit with his cover of Marley’s “Stir It Up“.

Nash’s 1972 reggae-influenced single “I Can See Clearly Now” sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in November 1972. “I Can See Clearly Now” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 4, 1972, and remained atop the chart for four weeks, spending the same four weeks atop the adult contemporary chart. The I Can See Clearly Now album includes four original Marley compositions published by JAD: “Guava Jelly”, “Comma Comma”, “You Poured Sugar On Me”, and the follow-up hit “Stir It Up”. “There Are More Questions Than Answers” was a third hit single taken from the album.

Nash was also a composer for the Swedish romance film Vill så gärna tro (1971), in which he portrayed Robert. The movie soundtrack, partly instrumental reggae with strings, was co-composed by Bob Marley and arranged by Fred Jordan.

JAD Records ceased to exist in 1971, but it was revived in 1997 by American Marley specialist Roger Steffens and French musician and producer Bruno Blum for the Complete Bob Marley & the Wailers 1967–1972 ten-album series, for which several of the Nash-produced Marley and Tosh tracks were mixed or remixed by Blum for release. In the UK, his biggest hit was with the song “Tears on My Pillow” which reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in July 1975 for one week.

After a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World” in 1976 and “Let’s Go Dancing” in 1979, for many years Nash seemed to have dropped out of sight. He had a brief resurgence in the mid-1980s with the album Here Again (1986), which was preceded by the minor UK hit, “Rock Me Baby”. Younger audiences were introduced to Nash’s music with the appearance of Jimmy Cliff‘s cover of “I Can See Clearly Now” in Disney’s 1993 hit film Cool Runnings, and Nash’ original version appeared over the opening scene of John Cusack’s 1997 film, Grosse Point Blank.  In May 2006, Nash was singing again at SugarHill Recording Studios and at Tierra Studios in his native Houston. Working with SugarHill chief engineer Andy Bradley and Tierra Studios’ Grammy-winning Randy Miller, he began the work of transferring analog tapes of his songs from the 1970s and 1980s to Pro Tools digital format.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Nash among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

Acting career – 

Nash has four acting credits in film and television. In 1959, he had the lead role as Spencer Scott in Take a Giant Step, directed by Philip Leacock, one of the first black family films written by a black writer. In 1960 he appeared as “Apple” alongside Dennis Hopper in the crime drama Key Witness. In 1971, he played Robert in the Swedish romance Vill så gärna tro.

Death – 

Nash died at his home of natural causes in Houston on October 6, 2020, after a period of failing health. He was 80.

Credit: Wikipedia.

Helen Reddy – Remembering a Legend, “Queen of ’70s Pop” & “Feminist Icon!

Photo credit: Yahoo.com/Images

Helen Maxine Reddy (25 October 1941 – 29 September 2020) was an Australian-American singer, songwriter, author, actress, and activist. Born in Melbourne, Victoria, to a show-business family, Reddy started her career as an entertainer at age four. She sang on radio and television and won a talent contest on the television program, Bandstand in 1966; her prize was a ticket to New York City and a record audition, which was unsuccessful. She pursued her international singing career by moving to Chicago, and subsequently, Los Angeles, where she made her debut singles “One Way Ticket” and “I Believe in Music” in 1968 and 1970, respectively. The B-side of the latter single, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him“, reached number eight on the pop chart of Canadian magazine RPM. She was signed to Capitol Records a year later.

During the 1970s, Reddy enjoyed international success, especially in the United States, where she placed 15 singles on the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Six made the top 10 and three reached number one, including her signature hit “I Am Woman“. She placed 25 songs on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart; 15 made the top 10 and eight reached number one, six consecutively. In 1974, at the inaugural American Music Awards, she won the award for Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist. On television, she was the first Australian to host a one-hour weekly primetime variety show on an American network, along with specials that were seen in more than 40 countries.

Between the 1980s and 1990s, as her single “I Can’t Say Goodbye to You” became her last to chart in the US, Reddy acted in musicals and recorded albums such as Center Stage before retiring from live performance in 2002. She returned to university in Australia, earned a degree, and practiced as a clinical hypnotherapist and motivational speaker. In 2011, after singing “Breezin’ Along with the Breeze” with her half-sister, Toni Lamond, for Lamond’s birthday, Reddy decided to return to live to perform.

Reddy’s song “I Am Woman” played a significant role in popular culture, becoming an anthem for second-wave feminism. She came to be known as a “feminist poster girl” or a “feminist icon”.^[6] In 2011, Billboard named her the number-28 adult contemporary artist of all time (number-9 woman). In 2013, the Chicago Tribune dubbed her as the “Queen of ’70s Pop”.

Early years

Helen Maxine Reddy was born into a well-known Australian show-business family in Melbourne to actress, singer, and dancer Stella Campbell (née Lamond) and Maxwell David “Max” Reddy (born 1914 in Melbourne, Victoria), a writer, producer, and actor. Her mother performed at the Majestic Theatre in Sydney and was best known as a regular cast member on the television programs Homicide (1964), Country Town (1971), and Bellbird (1967). During Reddy’s childhood, she was educated at Tintern Grammar. Her half-sister Toni Lamond and her nephew Tony Sheldon are actor-singers.

Reddy had Irish, Scottish, and English ancestry. Her great-great-grandfather Edward Reddy was born 1855, in Dublin, Ireland. Her Scottish great-grandfather, Thomas Lamond, was a one-time mayor of Waterloo, New South Wales, whose patron was Hercules Robinson, 1st Baron Rosmead.  Patsy Reddy, New Zealand’s governor-general, is a distant cousin.

Reddy was born during World War II. Her father was a sergeant in the Australian Army with a unit of entertainers; he served alongside one of his actor friends, Peter Finch. They were serving together in New Guinea at the time of Reddy’s birth. Her father returned to service during the Korean War.

At age four, Reddy joined her parents on the Australian vaudeville circuit, singing and dancing; she recalled: “It was instilled in me: ‘You will be a star’. So between the ages of 12 and 17, I got rebellious and decided this was not for me. I was going to be a housewife and mother.” At age 12, due to her parents’ constant touring nationwide and their arguing, Reddy went to live with her paternal aunt, Helen “Nell” Reddy, “… who was her role model,” and as her aunt, “she gave her niece stability, a sense of morality, and strength” for her future career as a singer who motivated women. The younger Helen’s teenaged rebellion in favor of domesticity manifested as marriage to Kenneth Claude Weate, a considerably older musician and family friend; divorce ensued, and to support herself as a single mother to daughter Traci, she resumed her performing career, concentrating on singing, since health problems precluded dancing (she had a kidney removed at 17). She sang on radio and television, eventually winning a talent contest on the Australian pop music TV show Bandstand, the prize ostensibly being a trip to New York City to cut a single for Mercury Records. After arriving in New York in 1966, she was informed by Mercury that her prize was only the chance to “audition” for the label and that Mercury considered the Bandstand footage to constitute her audition, which was deemed unsuccessful. Despite having only US$200 (equivalent to $1,576 in 2019) and a return ticket to Australia, she decided to remain in the United States with 3-year-old Traci and pursue a singing career.

Early career

Reddy recalled her 1966 appearance at the Three Rivers Inn in Syracuse, New York – “there were like twelve people in the audience” – as typical of her early U.S. performing career. Her lack of a work permit made it difficult to obtain singing jobs, and she was forced to make trips to Canada, which did not require work permits for citizens of Commonwealth countries. In 1968, Martin St James, an Australian stage hypnotist she had met in New York City, threw Reddy a party with an admission price of US$5 (equivalent to $36.76 in 2019) to enable Reddy – then down to her last US$12 (equivalent to $88.23 in 2019) – to pay her rent. On this occasion, Reddy met her future manager and husband, Jeff Wald, a 22-year-old secretary at the William Morris Agency, who crashed the party. Reddy told People in 1975, “[Wald] didn’t pay the five dollars, but it was love at first sight.”

Wald recalled that Reddy and he married three days after meeting, and along with daughter Traci, the couple took up residence at the Hotel Albert in Greenwich Village. Reddy later stated that she married Wald “out of desperation over her right to work and live in the United States.” According to New York Magazine, Wald was fired from William Morris soon after having met Reddy, and “Helen supported them for six months doing $35-a-night hospital and charity benefits. They were so broke that they snuck out of a hotel room carrying their clothes in paper bags.” Reddy recalled: “When we did eat, it was spaghetti, and we spent what little money we had on cockroach spray.” They left New York City for Chicago and Wald landed a job as talent coordinator at Mister Kelly’s. While in Chicago, Reddy gained a reputation singing in local lounges, including Mister Kelly’s, and in 1968, she landed a deal with Fontana Records, a division of major label Chicago-based Mercury Records. Her first single, “One Way Ticket“, on Fontana was not an American hit, but it did give Reddy her first appearance on any chart, as it peaked at number 83 in her native Australia.

“I Am Woman” era and stardom

Within a year, Wald relocated Reddy and Traci to Los Angeles, where he was hired at Capitol Records, the label under which Reddy was to attain stardom; however, Wald was hired and fired the same day. At the same time, in 1969, Reddy enrolled at the University of California Los Angeles to study parapsychology and philosophy part-time.

Reddy became frustrated as Wald found success managing such acts such as Deep Purple and Tiny Tim without making any evident effort to promote her; after 18 months of career inactivity, Reddy gave Wald an ultimatum: “he [must] either revitalize her career or get out… Jeff threw himself into his new career as Mr. Helen Reddy. Five months of phone calls to Capitol Records executive Artie Mogull finally paid off; Mogull agreed to let Helen cut one single if Jeff promised not to call for a month. She did “I Believe in Music” penned by Mac Davis backed with “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Jesus Christ Superstar. The A-side fell flat, but then some Canadian DJs flipped the record over and it became a hit – number 13 in June 1971 – and Helen Reddy was on her way.”

Reddy’s stardom was solidified when her single “I Am Woman” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1972. The song was co-written by Reddy with Ray Burton; Reddy attributed the impetus for writing “I Am Woman” and her early awareness of the women’s movement to expatriate Australian rock critic and pioneer feminist Lillian Roxon. Reddy is quoted in Fred Bronson‘s The Billboard Book of Number One Hits as having said that she was looking for songs to record which reflected the positive self-image she had gained from joining the women’s movement, but could not find any, so “I realized that the song I was looking for didn’t exist, and I was going to have to write it myself.”  “I Am Woman” was recorded and released in May 1972, but barely dented the charts in its initial release. However, female listeners soon adopted the song as an anthem and began requesting it from their local radio stations in droves, resulting in its September chart re-entry and eventual number-one peak. “I Am Woman” earned Reddy a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. At the awards ceremony, Reddy concluded her acceptance speech by famously thanking God “because She makes everything possible”. The success of “I Am Woman” made Reddy the first Australian singer to top the U.S. charts.

Three decades after her Grammy, Reddy discussed the song’s iconic status: “I think it came along at the right time. I’d gotten involved in the women’s movement, and there were a lot of songs on the radio about being weak and being dainty and all those sorts of things. All the women in my family, they were strong women. They worked. They lived through the Depression and a world war, and they were just strong women. I certainly didn’t see myself as being dainty,” she said.

Over the next five years following her first success, Reddy had more than a dozen U.S. top-40 hits, including two more number-one hits. These tracks included Kenny Rankin‘s “Peaceful” (number 12), the Alex Harvey country ballad “Delta Dawn” (number one), Linda Laurie‘s “Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)” (number three), Austin Roberts‘ “Keep on Singing” (number 15), Paul Williams‘ “You and Me Against the World” (featuring daughter Traci reciting the spoken bookends) (number 9), Alan O’Day‘s “Angie Baby” (number one), Véronique Sanson and Patti Dahlstrom‘s “Emotion” (number 22), Harriet Schock‘s “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady” (number eight), and the Richard Kerr/Will Jennings-penned “Somewhere in the Night” (number 19; three years later, a bigger hit for Barry Manilow).

On 23 July 1974, Reddy received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in the music industry, located at 1750 Vine Street.

At the height of her fame in the mid-1970s, Reddy was a headliner, with a full chorus of backup singers and dancers to standing-room-only crowds on the Las Vegas Strip. Among Reddy’s opening acts were Joan Rivers, David Letterman, Bill Cosby, and Barry Manilow. In 1976, Reddy recorded the Beatles‘ song “The Fool on the Hill” for the musical documentary All This and World War II.

Reddy was also instrumental in supporting the career of friend Olivia Newton-John, encouraging her to emigrate from England to the United States in the early 1970s, giving her professional opportunities that did not exist in the United Kingdom. At a party at Reddy’s house after a chance meeting with Allan Carr, a film producer, Newton-John won the starring role in the hit film version of the musical Grease.

Career eclipse – 

Reddy was most successful on the Easy Listening chart, scoring eight number-one hits there over a three-year span, from “Delta Dawn” in 1973 to “I Can’t Hear You No More” in 1976. However, the latter track evidenced a sharp drop in popularity for Reddy, with a number-29 peak on the Billboard Hot 100. Reddy’s 1977 remake of Cilla Black‘s 1964 hit “You’re My World” indicated comeback potential, with a number-18 peak, but this track – co-produced by Kim Fowley – would prove to be Reddy’s last top-40 hit. Its source album, Ear Candy, Reddy’s 10th album, became her first album to not attain at least gold status since her second full-length release, 1972’s Helen Reddy.

In 1978, Reddy sang as a backup singer on Gene Simmons‘s solo album on the song “True Confessions”. That year also saw the release of Reddy’s only live album, Live in London, recorded at the London Palladium.

Of Reddy’s eight subsequent single releases on Capitol, five reached the Easy Listening top 50 – including “Candle on the Water“, from the 1977 Disney film Pete’s Dragon (which starred Reddy). Only three ranked on the Billboard Hot 100: “The Happy Girls” (number 57) – the follow-up to “You’re My World”, and besides “I Am Woman”, Reddy’s only chart item that she co-wrote – and the disco tracks “Ready or Not” (number 73) and “Make Love to Me” (number 60), the latter a cover of an Australian hit by Kelly Marie, which gave Reddy alone R&B chart ranking at number 59. Reddy also made it to number 98 on the Country chart with “Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler”, the B-side to “The Happy Girls”.

Without the impetus of any major hits, Reddy’s four Capitol album releases subsequent to Ear Candy failed to chart. In 1981, Reddy said: “I signed [with Capitol] ten years ago…And when you are with a company so long you tend to be taken for granted. For the last three years, I didn’t feel I was getting support from them.”

May 1981 had the release of Play Me Out, Reddy’s debut album for MCA Records, which Reddy said had “made me a deal we [Reddy and Wald] couldn’t refuse”; “we shopped around and felt the most enthusiasm at MCA.” Reddy’s new label affiliation, though, would result in only one minor success; her remake of Becky Hobbs‘s 1979 country hit “I Can’t Say Goodbye to You” returned her for the last time to the Billboard Hot 100 at number 88; it also returned Reddy to the charts in the UK and Ireland (her sole previous hit in both was “Angie Baby”). Reddy’s 14 November 1981 Top of the Pops performance brought “I Can’t Say Goodbye to You” into the UK top 50; the track would rise there no higher than number 43, but in Ireland reached number 16, giving Reddy her final high placing on a major national chart. MCA released one further Reddy album: Imagination, in 1983; it would prove to be Reddy’s final release as a career recording artist.

The unsuccessful Imagination was released just after the finalization of Reddy’s divorce from Wald, whose alleged subsequent interference in her career Reddy blamed for the decline of her career profile in the mid-1980s: “Several of my performing contracts were canceled, and one promoter told me he couldn’t book me in case a certain someone ‘came after him with a shotgun’.” Reddy states that she was effectively being blacklisted from her established performance areas, which led to her pursuing a career in theatre, where Wald had no significant influence.

Later recordings

In 1990, Reddy issued Feel So Young on her own label – an album that includes remakes of Reddy’s repertoire favorites. Meanwhile, her one recording in the interim had been the 1987 dance maxi-single “Mysterious Kind”, on which Reddy had vocally supported Jessica Williams. The 1997 release of Center Stage was an album of show tunes that Reddy recorded for Varèse Sarabande; the track “Surrender” – originating in Sunset Boulevard – was remixed for release as a dance maxi-single. Reddy’s final album was the 2000 seasonal release The Best Christmas Ever. In April 2015, Reddy released a cover of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” for the album Keep Calm and Salute The Beatles on the Purple Pyramid label.

A frequent guest on talk shows and variety programs of the 1970s and early 1980s – with credits including The Bobby Darin Show, The Carol Burnett Show, and The Muppet Show – Reddy helmed the 1973 summer replacement series for The Flip Wilson Show (Reddy had become friends with Flip Wilson when she worked the Chicago club circuit early in her career); the series, The Helen Reddy Show, provided early national exposure for Albert Brooks and the Pointer Sisters. Reddy also served as the semiregular host of the late-night variety show The Midnight Special in 1975 and 1976.

Reddy’s film career included a starring role in Walt Disney‘s Pete’s Dragon, introducing the Oscar-nominated song “Candle on the Water” and the role of a nun in Airport 1975, singing her own composition “Best Friend”. For her part in Airport 1975, Reddy was nominated for a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Female.^[42] Reddy was one of many musical stars featured in the all-star chorale in the film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), and she later played cameo roles in the films Disorderlies (1987) and The Perfect Host (2010).

Despite her late 1970s decline on the music charts, Reddy still had sufficient star power in 1979 to host The Helen Reddy Special, broadcast that May on ABC-TV, of which Jeff Wald was the producer. In September 1981, Reddy announced she would be shooting the pilot for her own TV sitcom, in which she would play a single mother working as a lounge singer in Lake Tahoe, but this project was abandoned. Reddy was an occasional television guest star as an actress, appearing on the television programs The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, The Jeffersons (as herself), Diagnosis: Murder, and BeastMaster.

In 2007, Reddy had a voice cameo as herself in the Family Guy television show’s Star Wars parody, “Blue Harvest“.  In 2010, she guest-starred on Family Guy again singing the opening theme song for the show’s fictional Channel 5 News telecast.

In the mid-1980s, Reddy embarked on a new career in the theatre. She mostly worked in musicals, including Anything Goes, Call Me Madam, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and – both on Broadway and the West End – Blood Brothers. She also appeared in four productions of the one-woman show Shirley Valentine.

Credit: Wikipedia.com