HELEN REDDY

Helen Maxine Lamond Reddy (born 25 October 1941). At age 4, she 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." Reddy's teenage rebellion in favour 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 possessing only $200 and a return ticket to Australia, she elected to remain in the United States with three-year-old Traci and pursue a singing 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 any singing jobs in the U.S., and she was forced to make several trips to Canada which did not require work permits for citizens of Commonwealth countries like Australia. In the spring of 1968, Martin St. James – a hypnotist/entertainer and fellow Australian she had met in New York City – threw Reddy a party with an admission price of $5 dollars to enable Reddy – then down to her last $12 – to pay her rent.

It was on this occasion that 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 he and Reddy 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 the spring of 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 ever appearance on any chart as it peaked at #83 in her native Australia.

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. Reddy became frustrated as Wald found success managing such acts 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 b/w ''I Don't Know How to Love Him'' from Rice and Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar. The A-side fell flat but then some Canadian DJ's flipped the record over and it became a hit – #13 in June 1971 – and Helen Reddy was on her way. Reddy's stardom was solidified when her single "I Am Woman" reached #1 on the Hot 100 in December 1972.

The song was co-written by Reddy with Ray Burton; Reddy has 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 saying 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 #1 peak. "I Am Woman" earned 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 native of Australia to top the U.S. charts and also to win a Grammy. 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 sort 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 other U.S. Top 40 hits, including two more #1 hits. They included Kenny Rankin's "Peaceful" (#12), the Alex Harvey country ballad "Delta Dawn" (#1), Linda Laurie's "Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)" (#3), Austin Roberts' "Keep on Singing" (#15), "You and Me Against the World" (written by Paul Williams and featuring daughter Traci reciting the spoken bookends) (#9), Alan O'Day's "Angie Baby" (#1), Véronique Sanson's and Patti Dahlstrom's "Emotion" (#22), Harriet Schock's "Ain't No Way to Treat a Lady" (#8), and the Richard Kerr/Will Jennings-penned "Somewhere in the Night" (#19; two years later a bigger hit for Barry Manilow). Reddy's total sales figures for the United Sales are estimated in excess of 10 million singles and 15 million albums; her worldwide album sales tally is estimated in excess of 25 million.

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 Strip in Las Vegas. Reddy's opening acts were Joan Rivers and Manilow. In 1976, Reddy covered the Beatles song "The Fool on the Hill" for the musical documentary All This and World War II. Reddy was also instrumental in furthering the career of friend Olivia Newton-John, encouraging her to move from Britain to the United States in the early 1970s, giving her the best opportunity to expand her career. At a subsequent party at Reddy's house after a chance meeting with Allan Carr, the film's producer, Newton-John then won the starring role in the hit film version of the musical Grease.

Reddy was most successful on the Easy Listening chart, scoring eight No. 1 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 #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 #18 peak, but this track – co-produced by Kim Fowley – would prove to be Reddy's last Top 40 hit. Its parent album, 'Ear Candy', Reddy's 10th album, would become her first album to not attain at least Gold status since her second full-length release,

 In 1978, Reddy sang as a backup singer on Gene Simmons's solo album on the song ''True Confessions''. Of Reddy's eight subsequent single releases on Capitol, five reached the Easy Listening Top 50 – including "Candle on the Water", from the 1977 film Pete's Dragon (which starred Reddy). Only three ranked on the Billboard Hot 100: "The Happy Girls" (#57) – the follow-up to "You're My World" and, besides "I Am Woman", Reddy's only chart item which she co-wrote – and the disco tracks "Ready or Not" (#73) and "Make Love to Me" (#60), the latter a cover of an Australian hit by Kelly Marie – which gave Reddy a lone R&B chart ranking at #59. Reddy had also ranked at #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 would say: "I signed with Capito] 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 the support from them." May 1981 saw the release of 'Play Me Out', Reddy's debut album for MCA Records, who Reddy said had "made me a deal we [Reddy and Wald] couldn't refuse"; "we shopped around and felt the most enthusiasm at MCA." In fact, Reddy's new label affiliation 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 #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 #43, but in Ireland reached #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 finalisation of Reddy's divorce from Wald whose subsequent interference in her career Reddy would blame for the decline of her career profile in the mid-1980s: "Several of my performing contracts were cancelled, 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.

In 1990, Reddy issued 'Feel So Young' — on her own label —an album which included remakes of Reddy's repertoire favourites; her one interim recording had been the 1987dance maxi-single "Mysterious Kind", on which Reddy had vocally supported Jessica Williams. 1997 saw the release of 'Centre Stage', an album of show tunes which Reddy recorded for Varèse Records; the track "Surrender" – originating in Sunset Boulevard – was remixed for release as dance maxi-single. Reddy's final album to date was the 2000 seasonal release 'The Best Christmas Ever'. In her later years she suffered from dementia and died in 2020.

SINGLES

One Way Ticket

4 MAY '68

#83

I Don't Know How to Love Him

31 MAY '71

#2

Crazy Love

6 SEP '71

#66

I Am Woman

13 NOV '72

#2

Peaceful

9 APR '73

#36

Delta Dawn

18 JUN '73

#1

Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)

12 NOV '73

#1

Keep on Singing

25 MAR '74

#22

You and Me Against the World

29 JUL '74

#55

Angie Baby

18 NOV '74

#13

Free and Easy

7 JUL '75

#82

Bluebird

22 SEP '75

#100

Ain't No Way to Treat a Lady

3 NOV '75

#94

 

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Reddy

http://top100singles.blogspot.com.au/