Maureen McGovern
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Background information
Birth name Maureen Therese McGovern
Born July 27, 1949 (1949-07-27) (age 58)
Youngstown, Ohio, U.S.
Genre(s) Broadway theatre
Occupation(s) Singer, actress
Instrument(s) Vocals
Years active 1972 - present
Website
www.maureenmcgovern.com
Maureen Therese McGovern (born July 27, 1949) is an American singer and Broadway actress, widely known for her premier rendition of the 1973 hit, "The Morning After".[1]
Biography
Early life
McGovern was born in Youngstown, Ohio, the daughter of Mary Rita (née Welsh) and James Terrence McGovern.[2] She has Irish ancestry.[1] As a child, McGovern would listen to her father's barbershop quartet rehearse in their home. She was told by her elders that she began singing at the tender age of three, and would sometimes sing herself to sleep with things she heard on the radio. She decided at age eight that she wanted to be a professional singer; and she developed a taste for various types of music, including jazz, showtunes, oldies, and folk. Her influences include Barbra Streisand and Dionne Warwick.
Breakthrough recording
After graduating from Boardman High School in 1967, she worked as a secretary and performed part-time as a singer for a local folk band called Sweet Rain. Her singing caught the attention of Russ Regan (then head of 20th Century Records) in 1972 when he heard a demo she had recorded. At the time, Regan was searching for a singer to record "The Morning After" (the theme from The Poseidon Adventure) for release as a record. He hired McGovern sight unseen to record the song, which led to her signing with 20th Century Records. After it won an Oscar for Best Original Song, "The Morning After" quickly climbed the pop charts, reaching #1 in 1973.[1]
In 1974, she recorded two movie themes: "We May Never Love Like This Again" (from the disaster film The Towering Inferno, in which she made a short appearance when she is seen singing the song as the evening's entertainment) and "Wherever Love Takes Me" (from the British disaster film Gold). The former won an Oscar (though it was only a minor pop hit), and the latter received an Oscar nomination. These two songs (along with "The Morning After") led the media to call McGovern "the Disaster Theme Queen."
Challenges
McGovern's contract with 20th Century ended in 1976. Her career went downhill and she ended up broke, in large part because her managers and producers cheated McGovern out of her earnings. Ready to begin her life over again she moved to Marina del Rey and took a secretarial job under an assumed name. Nevertheless, she was still in demand occasionally for international live concerts. Her career made a turn for the better when McGovern was asked to record a version of "Can You Read My Mind," the love theme from 1978's Superman, which was not recorded for the film. The single achieved minor success on the Pop charts. Toward the end of the decade, McGovern recorded "Different Worlds," the theme from a short-lived TV sitcom entitled Angie. The song, her only other Top 40 single aside from "The Morning After," reached #18 on the Pop charts in 1979 and spent two weeks at #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. In 1980, McGovern made a cameo appearance as Sister Angelina, the singing nun, in the comedy-disaster movie Airplane!.
Broadway career
At the beginning of the 1980s, McGovern gave up movie themes to begin a career on Broadway, despite having no acting experience. In 1981, she made her Broadway debut as Mabel in a revival of Gilbert & Sullivan's musical The Pirates of Penzance. She then performed in two productions with the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera: The Sound of Music (1981; as Maria) and South Pacific (1982; as Nellie Forbush). She continued her theatrical career throughout the eighties and originated the role of Mary in the Off-Broadway production of Brownstone in 1985.
Carnegie Hall performance
She slowly returned to music in the mid-eighties, contributing songs to musical soundtracks and recording for various-artist compilations. She also returned to touring and performing in concerts and began establishing herself as a classy, jazzy nightclub and cabaret performer. Starting in 1987, she released three albums for CBS in three years - Another Woman in Love (a voice/piano album), State of the Heart (a fully orchestrated album), and Naughty Baby (a live album).
In 1989, she performed her debut concert in Carnegie Hall, singing a collection of songs by George Gershwin. The concert was recorded live and released that year as an album entitled Naughty Baby; it features a very first recording of a lost Gershwin song "A Corner of Heaven With You" (written ca. 1917).
Recent career
From the nineties into the 21st century, McGovern continued her careers in musical theatre, performing in concerts, and recording albums, and she occasionally made guest appearances on television. Other recordings include Baby I'm Yours (1992), a collection of her favorite songs from 1955 to 1970, and Out of This World (1996), a collection of songs by Harold Arlen. She was twice nominated for a Grammy, for her albums The Music Never Ends (1997), a collection of songs by Alan & Marilyn Bergman, and The Pleasure of His Company (1998), another voice/piano album.
In 2003, Out of This World and The Music Never Ends were re-released by Fynsworth Alley Records; both albums included bonus tracks, the former two, and the latter three.
In 2005, McGovern returned to the Broadway stage as Marmee opposite Sutton Foster's Jo in the musical adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Plagued by negative reviews, it quickly closed, but McGovern reprised her role for the successful subsequent national tour.[1]
She continues to appear in concert as a headliner and as a guest with symphony orchestras around the country. Her new CD "A Long and Winding Road," on the PS Classics label, salutes singer/songwriters of the 1960s like Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Lennon & McCartney and Randy Newman. She performed a concert act based on this material at the Metropolitan Room in New York City, the Rrazz Room in San Francisco and will tour with it throughout the next few years.
She also continues her work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association, where she anually appears on the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon.
Other
McGovern voiced Rachel in a film called Joseph: King of Dreams.
