Sally Fingerett (born December 25, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American folk singer-songwriter. She is a founding member of Four Bitchin' Babes and recorded many albums with the band. [1]
Fingerett joined the Chicago folk scene while a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, inspired by such artists as Steve Goodman and John Prine. She later moved to Nashville, Tennessee and became the lead singer for the bluegrass band Buffalo Gals. She also toured with artists such as John Hartford and Bill Monroe before beginning her solo career.
She met and married producer Dan Green, and they collaborated on producing commercial music. Green produced four of Fingerett's solo CDs, as well as the Four Bitchin' Babes album Fax It, Charge It, Don't Ask Me What's For Dinner.
In 1994, Fingerett had to suspend recording and performing after contracting a virus that paralyzed her vocal cords. She recovered use of her voice a year later. Soon after, Christine Lavin passed a recording of Fingerett's song Home Is Where The Heart Is (about accepting people regardless of sexual orientation) to Peter, Paul and Mary, who covered the song on their album Lifelines. Later, she divorced Green, and created a one-woman comedy/music show, It's A Crazy World….But Where Else Would We Live...the Musical Musings of a Mental Yentl.
Fingerett published her first book in 2015, The Mental Yentl: Stories from a Lifelong Student of Crazy. The book has a companion CD.
Fingerett lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband, Michael Stan. Their three children are EJ, Max, and Aaron.
Angela Maria "Ani" DiFranco is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums. DiFranco's music has been classified as folk rock and alternative rock, although it has additional influences from punk, funk, hip hop and jazz. She has released all her albums on her own record label, Righteous Babe.
Christine Lavin is a New York City-based singer-songwriter and promoter of contemporary folk music. She has recorded numerous solo albums, and has also recorded with other female folk artists under the name Four Bitchin' Babes. She is known for her sense of humor, which is expressed in both her music and her onstage performances. Many of her songs alternate between comedy and emotional reflections on romance.
Illinois, including Chicago has a wide musical heritage. Chicago is most famously associated with the development of electric blues music. Chicago was also a center of development for early jazz and later for house music, and includes a vibrant hip hop scene and R&B. Chicago also has a thriving rock scene that spans the breadth of the rock genre, from huge stadium-filling arena-rock bands to small local indie bands. Chicago has had a significant historical impact on the development of many rock subgenres including power pop, punk rock, indie rock, emo rock, pop punk, and alternative rock.
The Roches were an American vocal trio of sisters Maggie, Terre and Suzzy Roche, from Park Ridge, New Jersey.
Jackie DeShannon is an American singer-songwriter and radio broadcaster with a string of hit song credits from the 1960s onwards, as both singer and composer. She was one of the first female singer-songwriters of the rock and roll period. She is best known as the singer of "What the World Needs Now Is Love" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart", and as the writer of "When You Walk in the Room" and "Bette Davis Eyes", which became hits for The Searchers and Kim Carnes, respectively.
Shawn Colvin is an American singer-songwriter. While she has been a solo recording artist for decades, she is best known for her 1997 Grammy Award-winning song "Sunny Came Home".
Manitoba has produced much Canadian music, especially since the early 1960s.
Mary Black is an Irish folk singer. She is well known as an interpreter of both traditional folk and modern material which has made her a major recording artist in her native Ireland.
Cheryl Wheeler is a Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter of contemporary folk music. She has recorded thirteen folk albums to date and has toured extensively throughout the United States since the mid-1970s.
The Four Bitchin' Babes is a group of female singer-songwriters with rotating membership performing mainly humorous, satirical, or light-hearted songs in the folk genre. The current touring group consists of Sally Fingerett, Deirdre Flint, Christine Lavin, and Debi Smith. The artists have made numerous albums and have worked with producer Jeff Bova.
Karan Casey is an Irish folk singer, and a former member of the Irish band Solas. She resides in Cork, Ireland.
Barbara Jean Acklin was an American soul singer and songwriter, who was most successful in the 1960s and 1970s. Her biggest hit as a singer was "Love Makes a Woman" (1968). As a songwriter, she is best known for co-writing the multi-million-selling "Have You Seen Her" (1971) with Eugene Record, lead singer of the Chi-Lites.
Julie Gold is an American singer-songwriter. She is best known for her musical composition "From a Distance," which became a hit for Bette Midler and won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1991.
Rod MacDonald is an American singer-songwriter, novelist, and educator. He was a "big part of the 1980s folk revival in Greenwich Village clubs", performing at the Speakeasy, The Bottom Line, Folk City, and the "Songwriter's Exchange" at the Cornelia Street Cafe. He co-founded the Greenwich Village Folk Festival, now a non-profit, and is still the President and co-producer of its events. He is perhaps best known for his songs "American Jerusalem", about the "contrast between the rich and the poor in Manhattan", "A Sailor's Prayer", "Coming of the Snow", "Every Living Thing", and "My Neighbors in Delray", a description of the September 11 hijackers' last days in Delray Beach, Florida, where MacDonald has lived since 1995. His songs have been covered by Dave Van Ronk, Shawn Colvin, Four Bitchin' Babes, Jonathan Edwards, Garnet Rogers, Joe Jencks, and others. His 1985 recording "White Buffalo" is dedicated to Lakota Sioux ceremonial chief and healer Frank Fools Crow, whom he visited in 1981 and 1985, and who appears with MacDonald in the cover photograph. Since 1995 MacDonald has lived in south Florida, where his cd, "Later that Night" was named "Best Local Cd of 2014" by The Palm Beach Post and reached the top ten in national roots music charts. His first novel, The Open Mike, about a young man in the open mike scene of Greenwich Village, was published on December 5, 2014, by Archway Publishing. On December 10, 2020, MacDonald released his 13th solo recording, Boulevard, on Blue Flute Music. On April 14, 2021, his second novel, The American Guerillas, was published by Archway Publications. On June 1, 2023, MacDonald's 14th solo album, Rants And Romance, a collection of 14 new songs and 3 by other songwriters, was released by Blue Flute Music, charting in the top ten on national folk music charts during the summer.
Megon McDonough is an American folk/cabaret singer-songwriter and actress, from Crystal Lake, Illinois. After her early solo recording career brought national attention, she became a founding member of Four Bitchin' Babes, performing and recording with them from 1990 to 2001 and then resuming her solo work.
Debi Smith is an American folk singer-songwriter. She has been a member of Four Bitchin' Babes since 1994, with whom she continues to tour.
Nancy Moran is an American folk-rock singer-songwriter, based in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1992, she was a finalist in the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk Competition. Dirty Linen reportedly described her as having "a powerful and expressive voice that is stylish and stunning," and another reviewer wrote that she has "a voice .. both expressive and confident .. a joy to listen to." She has appeared on Americana music charts. She joined Four Bitchin' Babes in 2005. The group toured to promote the album, Diva Nation....Where Music, Laughter & Girlfriends Reign! (2009).
Mavis Staples is an American rhythm and blues and gospel singer and civil rights activist. She rose to fame as a member of her family's band The Staple Singers, of which she is the last surviving member. During her time in the group, she recorded the hit singles "I'll Take You There" and "Let's Do It Again". In 1969, Staples released her self-titled debut solo album.
Beverley Martyn is an English singer, songwriter and guitarist.
Yentl is a 1983 American romantic musical drama film directed, co-written, co-produced by, and starring American entertainer Barbra Streisand. It is based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy".