Helen Reddy

Reddy currently lives on Norfolk Island. Recently, he has played with John Sebastian and the J-Band, a jug band including Fritz Richmond from the Even Dozen Jug Band, Yank Rachell, an original jug-band leader, and Geoff Muldaur. She is also known for her appearances in works by British playwright Willy Russell and has performed both on Broadway and in the West End of London in the musical Blood Brothers and four productions of Shirley Valentine. In the '70s, Sebastian had a hit with the theme song to the Welcome Back, Kotter TV show, which found new life decades later when a sample from it became the hook for rapper Mase's 2004 hit "Welcome Back". She has also hosted two television series, including her own show and the late-night music series The Midnight Special. She has also appeared in a number of musical stage productions including Anything Goes, Call Me Madam, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The Lovin' Spoonful became part of the American response to the British Invasion and was noted for such folk-flavored hits as "Jug Band Music", "Do You Believe in Magic," "Summer In the City," "Daydream," "Nashville Cats," "Did You Ever have to Make Up Your Mind," "Six O'Clock," and "Younger Girl." The chart-topping band were originally to perform on the TV show that became The Monkees and also gained an added bit of publicity when Butler replaced Jim Rado in the role of Claude for a sold-out four-month run with the Broadway production of the rock musical Hair. Reddy has also worked extensively both on stage and the screen, with roles in movies such as Airport 1975 and Walt Disney's Pete's Dragon, and numerous television series. The band also featured popular drummer-vocalist Joseph Campbell Butler.

(Cher was similarly unlucky with the song The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia -- after she turned it down, it was recorded by Vicki Lawrence, who scored a #1 hit with it.). Sebastian was joined by Zal Yanovsky in the Spoonful, which was named after a Mississippi John Hurt song. #1 single. He came up through the Even Dozen Jug Band and the Mugwumps, which split to form the Lovin' Spoonful and the Mamas and Papas. She was equally fortunate with Angie Baby (written by Alan O'Day) -- it was first offered to Cher, who turned it down, so it was then offered to Reddy, who snapped it up, and it became her third U.S. He grew up surrounded by music and musicians, including Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie and hearing such players as Leadbelly and Mississippi John Hurt in his own neighborhood. charts and was a hit in several other countries including Australia. Ironcically, the DJs then began playing the other side of Midler's record, and this made a hit out that B-side, which was her version of the Andrew Sisters' classic Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. His father, also named John Sebastian, was a noted classical harmonica player and his mother was a radio script writer.

Reddy's version was released in the summer of 1973, just two days ahead Midler's version, but disc-jockeys preferred Reddy's rendition and it eventually went to #1 on the U.S. Sebastian was born in Greenwich Village in New York City. Fortunately for Reddy, Streisand refused to sing the song, so United Artists song plugger Wally Schuster called Jeff Wald and offered the song and the completed backing track to Reddy, who put her own vocal on it. He is best known as a founder of the Lovin' Spoonful, a band named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When the song started to get airplay, Barbra Streisand's producer Tom Catalano decided that Streisand could have a pop hit with it, so he had an instrumental backing track recorded. John Sebastian (born March 17, 1944) is an American songwriter and harmonica player. Both Bette Midler and the young Tanya Tucker recorded their own versions of Delta Dawn just before Reddy recorded hers.

The stories behind two of Reddy's biggest hits illustrate the often fickle nature of success in the music business. Her last Top 20 record was a revival of Cilla Black's 1964 hit You're My World, co-produced by Kim Fowley. These included the Alex Harvey country ballad Delta Dawn ( #1, 1973), Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress), Keep On Singing (#15, 1974), 'You And Me Against The World' (written by Paul Williams and featuring daughter Traci daughter Traci reciting the spoken bookends), Emotion, Peaceful (#15), Angie Baby (#1, 1974), the Carole King - Gerry Goffin song I Can't Hear You No More (1976). Top 40 hits including two more #1 hits.

Over the next five years, she had more than a dozen other U.S. The single earned a Grammy Award and at the awards ceremony she concluded her acceptance speech by famously thanking God "because She makes everything possible". 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. She scored an international hit in 1972 with a re-recorded version of a song she co-wrote with Australian musician Ray Burton, the feminist anthem "I Am Woman", which became her first U.S #1.

hit (1971) was a cover of I Don't Know How To Love Him (from Jesus Christ Superstar. Reddy's first Top 40 U.S. Reddy was also instrumental in furthering Newton-John's career -- she encouraged her friend to move from Britain to the United States in the early 1970s, and Olivia won the starring role of Sandy in the hit film version of the musical Grease after a chance meeting with the film's producer Alan Carr at a party at Reddy's house. Top 40 singles between 1971 and 1978.

Alongside her friend (and fellow Australian expatriate) Olivia Newton-John, Reddy became one of the most successful female recording artists of the Seventies, with fourteen U.S. Twenty-seven labels rejected her before she was finally signed to a contract with Capitol Records in 1970. After a stint in Chicago, the family moved to Los Angeles where Reddy tried to established herself as a recording artist. Settling initially in New York, she met Jeff Wald, then an agent with the William Morris Agency; the couple began living together four days later and she and Wald (who became her manager) subsequently married.

After beginning her career in radio and television in Australia, she won a talent contest on the Australian pop music TV show Bandstand which enabled her to move to the United States in 1966. In her late teens she was briefly married an older musician, with whom she had a daughter, Traci, but they divorced soon afterwards. Reddy began performing on stage with her parents at four years of age. Reddy was born into a well-known Australian show business family -- her parents, well-known performers on the Australian vaudeville circuit, were actress and singer Stella Lamond and writer-actor-comedian Max Reddy; her older sister is actress-singer Toni Lamond and her nephew is actor-singer Tony Sheldon.

She has sold more than 15 million albums and 10 million singles, and was the first Australian-born performer to win a Grammy award. #1 singles. Melbourne, Australia, October 25, 1942 is an Australian-born pop singer who was immensely successful in the 1970s with numerous hit records including three U.S. Helen Reddy (b.