Each and every month this year we'll be bringing you interviews that Jeff March and Marti Smiley-Childs have done in their excellent book series "Where Have All The Pop Stars Gone."
One of my personal all-time favorites in this series was their interview with Anne Murray. (Anne is one of those artists that makes my list of performers I most regret never having seen in concert ... I always liked her music and still listen to it quite often. I remember feeling sad to hear that she had officially retired when I first read Jeff's and Marti's interview with her.)
As such, I am VERY proud to share this piece with our readers today. (kk)
That’s very kind of you, Kent.
Persuading Anne to speak with us took some doing; she initially declined our request because she already had been retired for six years and values her privacy. But when she finally agreed eight months after our initial inquiry, she was conversational, relaxed and spoke candidly about her joys and regrets, answering all of our questions in rich detail.
We really enjoyed speaking with her, and we’re glad that you recognize her stature as an entertainer and recording artist.
Sincerely,
She was Elvis' favorite singer ... and she's certainly always been one of mine.
Read on. (kk)
Insights into … Anne Murray
[28 Billboard Hot 100 singles, 1970–86; two certified
RIAA gold]
Over the course of Anne Murray’s prolific hit-making career, she had major success as a recording artist, as a concert performer and in television. She recorded 37 studio albums that yielded 80 singles, and she won four Grammy Awards. Two of her singles earned gold records, and Anne’s albums yielded 15 gold records and nine platinum and multi-platinum awards.
During four
decades, Anne received dozens of accolades and honors, including three American
Music Awards; 25 Juno awards from the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts
and Sciences, capped with her 1993 induction into the Juno Hall of Fame; three
U.S. Country Music Association awards; 16 Academy of Country Music Awards,
including “top female vocalist” in nine years; and three Canadian Country Music
Association awards, including her 2002 induction into that organization’s Hall
of Fame. That’s quite a string of accomplishments for a small-town Nova Scotian
who had begun a career as a high school physical education teacher when fame
eclipsed her.
Yet she didn’t consider herself a country music
performer. She defied all attempts to pigeonhole her into any single radio
format or musical style, as demonstrated in the disparate styles of her two
singles that earned gold records – the bouncy, country-tinged “Snowbird” and
the mature ballad “You Needed Me.” Anne’s success across divergent genres
helped pave the way for Crystal Gayle, Olivia Newton-John, Shania Twain, Lee
Ann Womack, and Taylor Swift to further blur the lines between country, pop,
and adult contemporary.
She has recorded tunes written by a diverse spectrum
of writers, including Kenny Rogers, Paul Williams, Gordon Lightfoot, Henry Mancini,
Bobby Darin, Dave Loggins, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney. While many of
her singles were a godsend to previously undiscovered songwriters, she had a
knack for giving new life and a fresh perspective to already well-known songs
previously recorded by the Everly Brothers, the Beatles, the Monkees, Dionne
Warwick, and Glen Campbell. She became a bellwether for female crossover
singers, even though she hadn’t set out to do so.
Introduction to American TV audiences
With sales of her first hit, “Snowbird,” approaching one million copies, Anne was invited in September of 1970 to do a guest spot on the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, a prime-time CBS television show.
“Glen had heard ‘Snowbird,’ and he had heard my
album, and he wanted me on the show. So I flew to California and walked into
the studio scared out of my mind. Before the rehearsals, we went up to Glen’s
dressing room, and the producers, the writers, everybody was there with him.
Glen asked if I could sing harmony and I said, ‘Yes,’ so he started singing and
I just jumped in with the harmonies, and we sang two or three songs. I could
see everyone in the room relax, and everybody just went, ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah,
this is going to work.’ Glen was so excited that I could do all of this stuff
vocally, because he was such a great singer,” Anne said. Beginning with the
October 4th episode, Anne was a guest on Glen’s show seven times during the
1970–71 season. “I was a semi-regular on his show for three years, and
somewhere in there we decided it would be nice to do a duet album” [Anne Murray / Glen Campbell, which Capitol
released in November 1971].
Anne’s passion
“I don’t think I had a passion for teaching. It was
just something that was there and available to me. I love sports, and I thought
teaching would be something I’d like, but the singing was a whole different
kettle of fish – that was my passion.
That was something I had to do, like breathing. So wherever I went, even in the
school, I would sing with the choirs. There was a music teacher there, and he
invited me to come to choir practices and be part of the school choirs. So any
chance I could get to sing, I did.”
How stardom affected Anne’s personal life
“I would have a couple of hit records a year, but the
record company would want me to churn out three a year, and it got to be too
much. I was a workhorse, and I was working all the time. I worked way too hard,
because I thought that’s what you had to do. Things suffered, but in those days, it was strike while the iron’s hot, and it just wore me out. If I had it to do
over again, I would cut the number of albums in half, to make each one count. I
don’t have a lot of regrets, except I wish I had dug my heels in and said, ‘I
need some time with my family.’ I never would say that for myself, but I would
say it for the family. The family really suffered and there were too many
compromises. I kept thinking this is my job, and this is what I have to do, and
I can’t stop. My daughter was born when I was at the very peak of my career,
and I knew that my kids were going to suffer, and they did.”
Anne’s life since her 2008 retirement
“Forty years is long enough to do anything. I have
kids, and now I have grandchildren, and I wanted to have some time with them. I
wanted to have time with my kids and get to know them. And for the past several
years, I have. I also play golf, and I do whatever I want to do. It was hard at
first. It’s hard to retire. I can stop singing, but I can’t stop being Anne
Murray, so there are charities, and lots of things that I do to keep me busy,
so that’s what I do now.”
The narrative and quotations in this article are excerpted from the book Where Have All the Pop Stars Gone? — Volume 3, by Marti Smiley Childs and Jeff March. This material is copyrighted © 2016 by EditPros LLC and may not be reproduced or redistributed without written permission.
You can read Jeff and Marti's complete interview with Anne Murray in their book "Where Have All The Pop Stars Gone, Volume 3," available here:
https://www.editpros.com/WHATPSG_Vol_3.html
THE ANNE MURRAY HIT LIST
(from Billboard's Pop and Country Charts - stats courtesy Joel Whitburn's Record Research)
1970 - Snowbird (#8 POP / #10 Country)
1971 - A Stranger In My Place (#122 POP / #27 Country)
1971 - Talk It Over in The Morning (#57 POP / #xx Country)
1971 - I Say A Little Prayer / By The Time I Get To Phoenix (medley with Glen Campbell) #81 POP / #40 Country
1972 - Cotton Jenny (#71 POP / #11 Country)
1973 - Danny's Song (#7 POP / #10 Country)
1973 - What About Me (#64 POP / #20 Country)
1974 - Love Song (#12 POP / #8 Country) - *Grammy Winner - Best Country Female Vocal
1974 - He Thinks I Still Care (#xx POP / #1 Country)
1974 - You Won't See Me (#8 POP / #xx Country)
1974 - Son Of A Rotten Gambler (#xx POP / #5 Country)
1975 - Uproar (#xx POP / #28 Country)
1976 - The Call (#91 POP / #19 Country)
1976 - Golden Oldie (#xx POP / #41 Country)
1976 - Things (#89 Pop / #22 Country)
1978 - Walk Right Back (#103 POP / #4 Country)
1978 - You Needed Me (#1 POP / #4 Country) - *Grammy Winner - Best Pop Female Vocal / also American Country Music's Song Of The Year
1979 - I Just Fall In Love Again (#12 POP / #1 Country)
1979 - Shadows In The Moonlight (#25 POP / #1 Country)
1979 - Broken-Hearted Me (#12 POP / #1 Country)
1980 - Daydream Believer (#12 POP / #3 Country)
1980 - Lucky Me (#42 POP / #9 Country)
1980 - I'm Happy Just To Dance With You (#64 POP / #23 Country)
1980 - Could I Have This Dance (#33 POP / #1 Country) - *Grammy Winner - Country Female Vocal
1981 - Blessed Are The Believers (#34 POP / #1 Country)
1981 - We Don't Have To Hold Out (#xx POP / #16 Country)
1981 - It's All I Can Do (#53 POP / #9 Country)
1982 - Another Sleepless Night (#44 POP / #4 Country)
1982 - Hey Baby (#xx POP / #7 Country)
1983 - Somebody's Always Saying Goodbye (#xx POP / #7 Country)
1983 - A Little Good News (#74 POP / #1 Country) - *Grammy Winner - Best Country Female Vocal / also Country Music Association's Single Of The Year
1984 - That's Not The Way It's S'posed To Be (#106 POP / #46 Country)
1984 - Just Another Woman In Love (#xx POP / #1 Country)
1984 - Nobody Loves Me Like You Do (#103 POP / #1 Country) - duet with Dave Loggins
1985 - Time Don't Run Out On Me (#xx POP / #2 Country)
1985 - I Don't Think I'm ready For You (#xx POP / #7 Country)
1986 - Now And Forever (You And Me) #92 POP / #1 Country)
1986 - My Life's A Dance (#xx POP / #26 Country)
1987 - On And On (#xx POP / #23 Country)
1987 - Are You Still In Love With Me (#xx POP / #20 Country)
1987 - Anyone Can Do The Heartbreak (#xx POP / #27 Country)
1989 - Slow Passin' Time (#xx POP / #36 Country)
1989 - If I Ever Fall In Love Again (#xx POP / #28 Country) duet with Kenny Rogers
1990 - Feed The Fire (#xx POP / #5 Country)
1991 - Bluebird (#xx POP / #39 Country)
