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Mari Wilson | |
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| Birth name | Mari Macmillan Ramsay Wilson |
| Also known as | Miss Beehive, Neasden Queen of Soul |
| Born | 29 September 1954 |
| Origin | Neasden, London, England |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1980–present |
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| Website | mariwilson |
Mari Macmillan Ramsay Wilson (born 29 September 1954, Neasden, London) [1] [2] is a British pop and jazz singer. She is best known for her 1982 UK top-10 hit single "Just What I Always Wanted" and her 1960s image complete with beehive hairstyle.
Recording on Compact Records with her backing band The Wilsations, Wilson scored six UK hit singles between 1982 and 1984. Her biggest hit, "Just What I Always Wanted" peaked at No. 8 in the UK Singles Chart in 1982. [3]
In 1983, she scored a second Top 40 hit with a cover of "Cry Me a River" (UK No. 27) and released her debut album, Showpeople (UK No. 24). [3] After this, further commercial success eluded her, though in 1985 she recorded the song "Would You Dance with a Stranger" (theme for the film Dance with a Stranger ) and turned her career towards live performances. [4] She subsequently distanced herself from her beehive days, [4] but started touring with her old songs again in 2007.
In 1992, her album The Rhythm Romance, which combined jazz standards with 1960s songs and original material, failed to return her to the charts. She continued performing with jazz bands, and she sang the theme song to the sitcom Coupling ("Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps"). Her version of "Cry Me a River" was featured in the 1990s crime drama series McCallum .[ citation needed ]
In 2005, she returned to recording with the album Dolled Up. This was followed by a compilation of her hits, The Platinum Collection, to celebrate her 25th anniversary in the music industry. Apart from pursuing her solo career, she toured with Barb Jungr and Claire Martin as the cabaret act Girl Talk (though Claire Martin has now been replaced by Gwyneth Herbert). [5]
Wilson has also performed in musicals such as Dusty - The Musical, [6] and has been featured on a BBC Television series about celebrities and their health (she has Type 1 Diabetes).
Her band was known as The Imaginations for their first two singles [7] before becoming The Wilsations, [8] and her backing vocalists were called The Marionettes. Occasional featured artists were Michelle Collins, Julia Fordham [4] and bassist 'Thumbs' Cunningham.
Wilson's fourth studio album, Emotional Glamour, was released on her own Beehive label in October 2008 [9] (though she has long ago changed her former trademark hairstyle). She has also written and starred in a one-woman musical, The Love Thing. [10]
In 2012, an album of covers called Cover Stories was released, funded by public subscription. She also writes a regular blog about her life and music. [11]
On 30 September 2018, she appeared with Soft Cell, as an unannounced special guest to sing a duet with Marc Almond, as part of their final live concert 'Say Hello and Wave Goodbye, One Last Time' at The O2 Arena in London.
Wilson is a longtime resident of Crouch End, north London and is married to TV producer Mal Young. Her parents are from Scotland. [12]
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, better known by her stage name Dusty Springfield, was an English singer. With her distinctive mezzo-soprano sound, she was a popular singer of blue-eyed soul, pop and dramatic ballads, with French chanson, country, and jazz in her repertoire. During her 1960s peak, she ranked among the most successful British female performers on both sides of the Atlantic. Her image – marked by a peroxide blonde bouffant/beehive hairstyle, heavy makeup and evening gowns, as well as stylised, gestural performances – made her an icon of the Swinging Sixties.
Anthony Newley was an English actor, singer, songwriter, and filmmaker. A "latter-day British Al Jolson", he achieved widespread success in song, and on stage and screen. "One of Broadway's greatest leading men", from 1959 to 1962 he scored a dozen entries on the UK Top 40 chart, including two number one hits. Newley won the 1963 Grammy Award for Song of the Year for "What Kind of Fool Am I?", sung by Sammy Davis Jr., and wrote "Feeling Good", which became a signature hit for Nina Simone. His songs have been sung by a wide variety of singers including Fiona Apple, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, Michael Bublé and Mariah Carey.
Teresa Brewer was an American singer whose style incorporated pop, country, jazz, R&B, musicals, and novelty songs. She was one of the most prolific and popular female singers of the 1950s, recording around 600 songs.
Doris Troy was an American R&B singer and songwriter, known to her fans as "Mama Soul". Her biggest hit was "Just One Look", a top 10 hit in 1963.
Helen Kate Shapiro is a British pop and jazz singer and actress. While still a teenager in the early 1960s, she was one of Britain's most successful female singers. With a voice described by AllMusic as possessing "the maturity and sensibilities of someone far beyond their teen years", Shapiro recorded two 1961 UK chart toppers, "You Don't Know" and "Walkin' Back to Happiness", when she was just 14 years old.
Dohnyale Sharon "Deni" Hines is an Australian singer who has been releasing music since the early 1990s, with chart success in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Europe. She is the daughter of American-born Australian singer Marcia Hines.
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"Time After Time" is a romantic jazz standard with lyrics written by Sammy Cahn and music by Jule Styne in 1946.
"Am I the Same Girl?" is a popular song written by Eugene Record and Sonny Sanders. First recorded in 1968 by Barbara Acklin, "Am I the Same Girl?" charted most successfully in the US as a 1992 release by Swing Out Sister. However, the song had its greatest impact as a 1968–69 instrumental hit single by Young-Holt Unlimited under the title "Soulful Strut".
"How Can I Be Sure" is a popular song written by Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati, and originally recorded by the Young Rascals for their 1967 album Groovin' with a single release in August 1967 affording the group their fourth Top 10 hit peaking at #4.
Victoria Harrison is a British rock singer and DJ who performs under the stage name Amazonica.
"Who Can I Turn To?" (alternatively titled "Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)") is a song written by English composer-lyricists Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley and first published in 1964.
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" is a 1966 hit recorded by English singer Dusty Springfield that proved to be her most successful single, reaching number one on the UK Singles Chart and number four on the Billboard Hot 100. It is the cover of a 1965 Italian song by Pino Donaggio and Vito Pallavicini, titled "Io che non vivo (senza te)". Elvis Presley recorded another cover version in 1970 which was a hit in both the US and the UK. Other covers have charted in the UK, Ireland, Italy and Finland.
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Norma Cecilia Tanega was an American folk and pop singer-songwriter, painter, and experimental musician. In the 1960s, she had a hit with the single "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog" and wrote songs for Dusty Springfield and other prominent musicians. In later decades, Tanega worked mostly as a percussionist, playing various styles of music in the bands Baboonz, hybridVigor, and Ceramic Ensemble. She also wrote "You're Dead", which was used as the theme song of the film What We Do in the Shadows and the TV series of the same name.
Eva Sylvia Vrethammar, is a Swedish traditional pop and jazz singer. She is the daughter of Harald Vrethammar, an education official, and Britta Vrethammar, a musical education teacher, specializing in the piano.
Showpeople is the debut album by UK singer Mari Wilson. It was released in 1983 and featured her breakthrough hit "Just What I Always Wanted".
Sandie Shaw is a retired English pop singer. One of the most successful British female singers of the 1960s, she had three UK number one singles with "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" (1964), "Long Live Love" (1965) and "Puppet on a String" (1967). With the latter, she became the first British entry to win the Eurovision Song Contest. She returned to the UK Top 40, for the first time in 15 years, with her 1984 cover of the Smiths song "Hand in Glove". Shaw retired from the music industry in 2013.
"Just What I Always Wanted" is a song by English singer Mari Wilson, released in 1982 as the lead single from her 1983 debut album Showpeople.
Tot Taylor is an English, Cambridge-born, London-based songwriter, composer, record producer, author and art curator. He was a songwriter, singer, performer and band member throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties as well as composer of film soundtracks and theatre scores including stage-productions for the UK's National Theatre. In 2003 he founded the Riflemaker Gallery in London with the curator Virginia Damtsa, which featured feminist, audio and performative art for galleries and museums.
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