Rita Abrams | |
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Born | August 30, 1943 |
Origin | Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. |
Genres |
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Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter |
Instruments |
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Years active | 1970–present |
Labels | |
Website | ritaabrams |
Rita Abrams (born August 30, 1943) is an American songwriter, performer and writer. Her song "Mill Valley", recorded with children at the school where she was teaching, was released under the name Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point Fourth Grade Class in 1970, becoming a Billboard Hot 100 and Easy Listening hit and being nominated for a Grammy. In 1980, she won an Emmy for the music for I Want It All Now! , an NBC documentary about life in Marin County, California.
She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where she attended Cleveland Heights High School and studied classical piano and music theory at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She attended college in Cincinnati and at Simmons College in Boston, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. Boston University granted her a fellowship for a Masters Program in Special Education, after which she taught for two years in Boston. There, she also started to write verse and song lyrics, and sang with the Three Faces of Eve, an all-girl rock and roll band. [1] [2] [3]
In 1968, she moved to California and secured a teaching post at Strawberry Point Elementary School in Mill Valley. On Christmas Day 1969, she wrote a song about the town for her kindergarten class to sing. It was heard by record producer Erik Jacobsen, who recorded Abrams with the children from the third grade class at the school, and took it to Warner Bros. Records where the label management "guys in suits stood up and gave it a standing ovation". [1] [4] Released in June 1970 on the Reprise label, the record reached #90 on the Billboard pop chart and #5 on the Easy Listening (Now Billboard Adult Contemporary) chart. [5] Promotional photos of the singers were taken by Annie Leibovitz, and Abrams appeared on several networked TV shows and in national magazines, while also turning down an opportunity to advertise Jell-O. A performance for the Mill Valley Fourth of July celebration was filmed by Francis Ford Coppola. [6] The follow-up single, "Buildin' a Heaven on Earth", was written by singer/songwriter Norman Greenbaum. [7]
Following the success of "Mill Valley", Abrams, Jacobsen and the children recorded and released an album, entitled Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point 4th Grade Class as the children had by then moved up a grade. [6] According to reviewer Greg Adams, "Only the most hard-hearted cynic could find no enjoyment in this minor masterpiece of early-'70s soft pop." [7]
Abrams then left teaching to pursue a career in music and verse writing, which subsequently included children's records and novelty songs, many in collaboration with Dr. Elmo (Elmo Shropshire), commercials, and greeting cards. She won a national Emmy in 1980 for writing the music for I Want It All Now, a documentary about life in Marin County, and a regional Emmy in 1992 for Classic Stories for Children. In 1981 she published a book, At Your Age You're Having a What? The Advantages of Middle-Aged Motherhood. [1] [4] She also created a Las Vegas musical revue based on John Gray's book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus , and a show about life in Marin County, For Whom The Bridge Tolls. [8]
She remained a resident of Mill Valley at least until 2014, when it was reported that she was moving out of the area. [9]
Nancy Sandra Sinatra is an American singer-songwriter, actress, film producer and author. She is the elder daughter of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra and is known for her 1965 signature hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'".
Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, United States, located about 14 miles (23 km) north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge and 52 miles (84 km) from Napa Valley. The population was 14,231 at the 2020 census.
Strawberry is a census-designated place (CDP) and an unincorporated district of Marin County, California, United States. It shares a ZIP code (94941) with Mill Valley and falls within its school districts; however, it is considered within the sphere of influence of the town of Tiburon. It is largely separated from Mill Valley by U.S. Route 101. Its population was 5,447 at the 2020 census.
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Erik Jacobsen is an American record producer, song publisher and artist manager. He is best known for his work in the 1960s with Tim Hardin, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Charlatans, and Sopwith Camel, and later with Norman Greenbaum, Tazmanian Devils and Chris Isaak. Retiring after forty years in the studio, he began working in video production. His first major video project was an auto-biographical webside, All About Erik, launched in 2019. His next, Erik's Travels, features his prize-winning travel documentaries, and was launched in 2024.
Misses is a 1996 compilation album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. The selections, chosen by Mitchell herself, concentrate on her lesser known, more experimental work, including jazz influenced recordings from the late 1970s and electronic music from the 1980s. Mitchell also designed the album cover, which features her bending down in front of the camera. The album is a companion to Hits, issued on the same day. Mitchell agreed to a request from her record company to release a greatest hits album on the condition that she also be allowed to release Misses. There were also plans to release a Misses 2 but were rejected by the label when suggested by Mitchell.
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"Mill Valley" is a song written and composed by American singer-songwriter and teacher Rita Abrams, and performed by her and the students in the third grade who were attending Strawberry Point Elementary School during the 1969–1970 school year, initially billed under Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point Third Grade Class. Following the song's success, the label had requested that Abrams record an album with the class, which was named Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point 4th Grade Class.
Gracie Madigan Abrams is an American singer-songwriter. She signed with Interscope Records to release two extended plays, Minor (2020) and This Is What It Feels Like (2021). After performing as an opening act on Olivia Rodrigo's Sour Tour, Abrams released her debut studio album, Good Riddance (2023), which moderately entered the Billboard 200. Throughout 2023, she performed as an opening act for Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour, and received a nomination for Best New Artist at the 66th Grammy Awards. In late 2023, Abrams was featured on a remix of the song "Everywhere, Everything" by Noah Kahan, marking her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100. Abrams' second album, The Secret of Us, was released on June 21, 2024, to favorable reviews and commercial success, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200.
I Want It All Now! is a 1978 American documentary television special produced by NBC News about Marin County, California and the hedonistic and narcissistic lifestyle ostensibly characteristic of the affluent county. The program also explored the popularity of the human potential movement and new age ideologies in Marin, social problems such as suicide, alcoholism, and divorce associated with the Marin lifestyle, and the effect that this had on children growing up there. The program presented Marin as at the forefront of trends that were becoming more predominant in the larger American society in the late 1970s, and it represented an early snapshot of the lifestyle that a few years later would be termed "yuppie".