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Anne Murray
Musical artist

Morna Anne Murray, CC, ONS (born June 20, 1945) is a Grammy Award-winning Canadian singer. Murray has performed in pop, country and adult contemporary styles. So far, her albums have sold over 54 million copies.

Murray was the first Canadian female solo singer to reach #1 on the U.S. charts, and also the first to earn a Gold record for one of her signature songs, "Snowbird" (1970). She is often cited as the woman who paved the way for other Canadian international success stories such as Céline Dion, Sarah McLachlan and Shania Twain. She is also the first woman and the first Canadian to win "Album of the Year" at the Country Music Association Awards for her 1984 album A Little Good News.

Murray has received four Grammy Awards, 24 Juno Awards (she continues to hold the record for the most Junos awarded to an artist), three American Music Awards and three Canadian Country Music Awards. She has been inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, the Juno Hall of Fame and The Songwriters Hall of Fame. She is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame Walkway of Stars in Nashville, and has her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles and on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto.

Murray was named the world's best female celebrity golfer by Golf For Women magazine in 2007.

Early career

In 1965 Anne Murray appeared on the University of New Brunswick student project record "The Groove" (500 pressed). She sang two songs on the record - "Unchained Melody" and "Little Bit of Soap". On the label her name was misspelled "Anne Murry".

While at university, Murray was encouraged to audition for the 1960s CBC musical variety television show Singalong Jubilee, but Murray was not offered a singing position. Two years later she received a call from Singalong Jubilee co-host and associate producer, Bill Langstroth, and was asked to return for a second audition. Following that second audition, Murray was cast for the show.

After a summer of singing in local venues across the Maritimes, Murray began teaching Physical Education at a high school in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. After one year of teaching, she was offered a spot on a television show Let's Go, and returned to Singalong Jubilee.

As a regular member of the "Singalong Jubilee" cast, Murray appeared on the Singalong Jubilee Vol. III soundtrack and Our Family Album - The Singalong Jubilee Cast records released by Arc Records. The show's musical director, Brian Ahern, advised Murray that she should move to Toronto and record a solo album. Murray's first album, What About Me, was produced by Ahern in Toronto and released in 1968 on the Arc label.

Success

Anne left behind the glitz and glamour of Nova Scotia and her cushy job as a topless aerobics instructor to take up the heavy burden of competing in the Canadian Yoga Olympics, an annual, national, Canadian event that pushes even the most skilled yoga-enthusiasts to the brink. (Coincidentally, Murray went on to produce and co-star in the coming of age movie about skateboarding: Brink, starring the O.C.'s Adam Brody.) After a grueling qualifying round, our hero found herself faced with her first of many moral dilemas to come, when offered by two-time gold medalist in the Canadian Yoga Olympics, Lydia Bumstralta, to participate with her and five other athletes in an explicitly forebidden sex ring. Sex Rings were outlawed in 1952 by the board of trustees for the Canadian Yoga Gaming Commission after a series of scandals in the 1951 games lead to an outbreak of prematurely born babies and poorly performed pre-natal surgeries on the pregnant athletes. As a result of the numerous low-budget surgeries, the 1952 Yoga Olympics featured many lame, crippled and pregnant athletes, so the Board had no choice but to ban sex rings in future games. Murray, Bumstralta, and the five other lesser known athletes all received life-time bans from the sport, as stated in the Offical Yoga Olympic Rulebook, and Murray, like Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and countless others, flushed her career away years before she reached her true potential. The following years were increasingly tough on young Murray as she saw herself in and out of sex-rehab clinics, and even jail as her dependency for meaningless sex grew into a debilitating addiction. The resulting depression and failed suicide attempts lead her back to her original passion, music and physical education. Murray decided to combine her passions in her retrospective masterpiece The Anne Murray Experience, a dance album full of electronica and lyrics that inspired a fitness revolution in Canada that influenced Olivia Newton John to eventually release her hit Let's Get Physical. The album was met with mixed reviews and is now considered by many critics to be "years before its time." Murray's failure to find immediate success in the "Excerise Music" genre lead our hero back to depression, which resulted in the three part musical trilogy of coal-miner inspired albums released on her privately funded record label, Anne's Abs. The Mine Your Own Shaft albums were critically acclaimed in Europe, where the realities of coal-mining had never-before been reached, though it was viewed as an utter failure in Murray's native Canada. Years later, it would become a cult classic in American college towns, receiving an impressive amount of college radio air-time. But even this god-like indie status was unable to save Murray's musical career, as her self-ran record label, "Anne's Abs" dropped her the subsequent year, and forced our hero to join in the family business of organized crime, as revealed in her recent Billboard Hot 100 Books, All About Me: Confessions of an Olympic Sex Addict. The book was an accidental global phenomena, as many mistook it for the biography of six-time gold medalist, Sex-lympic athlete Guy Fingers (nowhere on the front cover was it written that the biography was on Anne Murray, and the consequential fraud later destroyed the Murray Bingo Corporation). After the mysterious death of head of family, Johnny "Three Thumbs" Murray, our hero became the Don of one of the least-known Canadian mafias of the 20th century. To protect her family, she took up the alias Fats Murray and started a Bingo card manufacturing company as a front for her money laundering and sex trafficking. Ten years later, our hero stepped down as one of the least successful Canadian drug lords in Canadian history and entered into the Canadian Military, where she quickly rose through the ranks, and, do to the lack of relevance of the Canadian Infantry, became a top-ranking General in the Canadian Infantry Corps. In 2002, however, our hero was dishonorabley discharged after violating the short-lived, and temporarily borrowed, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the Canadian Infantry (a policy Murray herself implemented) because she could not keep her mouth shut. Several anynomous soldiers accused her of both frequent asking and telling. After Murray's discharge, our hero was seen on every Vancouver street corner, yelling state secrets she claimed to have learned during her days in the military and reportedly conspiring against the Canadian government. After a lengthy legal battle in which our hero was, for a time, on death row (treason is punishable by death by hanging in Canada), Murray was aquitted of all crimes, as, it turns out, the state secrets she thought she was leaking were purposely fake information given to former Gen. Murray because top-ranking Canadian officials did not trust her and knew it was a matter of time before she was discharged. They accurately predicted she would, in fact, leak secrets if given the opportunity. More so, it was also proven that the reported conspiracies our hero preached against the government could by no humanly means be realisticly achieved (including hiring native Martians as mercenaries to attack and torture Canadian governmental representatives.)

Personal life

Morna Anne Murray was born on June 20, 1945, in the small coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia. Her father, James Carson Murray, was the town doctor and her mother, Marion Margaret Murray, was a registered nurse who focused her life on raising her family and community charity work. Murray was raised as the only girl in a family of five brothers - David, Daniel, Harold, Stewart and Bruce.

After expressing an early interest in music, she studied piano for six years; by age fifteen, she began taking voice lessons. Every Saturday morning, she took a bus ride from Springhill to Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, for her singing lesson with her teacher, Karen Mills. One of Murray's earliest performances was of the religious song "Ave Maria" at her high school graduation in 1962.

Following high school, Murray attended Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax for one year. She later studied Physical Education at University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. After receiving her degree, Murray taught physical education at a high school in Summerside, Prince Edward Island for one year.

Murray married Bill Langstroth on June 20, 1975 and gave birth to two children: William, in 1976, and the better-known of her children, Dawn Langstroth 1979, a singer/songwriter and artist who has recorded with her mother a number of times, including the duet "Let There Be Love" in 1999 for Murray's What A Wonderful World album. Anne and Dawn were featured in a mother-daughter duet of "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" on Murray's hit 2008 U.S. CD (released in late 2007 in Canada), Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends, Murray's highest-charting release in nine years.

In recent years, Murray has faced many personal challenges: her departure from Capitol Records after more than a quarter-century; the apparent suicide of Gene MacLellan, the composer of her first hit single, "Snowbird", which hit #1 in both Canada and the U.S. and virtually established her international singing career overnight; the death of her beloved manager and close friend, Leonard T. Rambeau, from colon cancer; the separation and subsequent divorce from her husband, Bill; her daughter Dawn's battle with anorexia (Dawn and Anne reluctantly did the US talk-show circuit to raise awareness of the deadly affliction); and most recently, the loss of her best friend to cancer (she recorded her 2005 album All of Me as a tribute to her).

She emerged from those personal adversities in 1999 with her best-selling album in 20 years, What a Wonderful World, which was certified Platinum, and her 2002 CD Country Croonin’ was certified Gold by the RIAA. Murray's 2007/2008 Anne Murray Duets: Legends & Friends CD was the second-highest debuting album on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart (U.S.) for the week ending February 2, 2008, and was Murray's highest-charting album in the U.S. since What a Wonderful World was released in 1999. The CD also debuted on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart at #8 and Top Internet Albums chart at #3 for the same week.

The Anne Murray Centre in Springhill, Nova Scotia

Murray has always kept strong ties with her hometown, Springhill, Nova Scotia, located about an hour south of Moncton, New Brunswick and 2 hours north of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Anne Murray Centre, located in Springhill, houses a vast collection of memorabilia from both her personal life and professional career in a series of award winning, three-dimensional displays. The Anne Murray Centre, which opened on July 28, 1989, is a registered Canadian charity. As a non-profit association, all the revenue generated from its operation is used to provide employment for local people and for its ongoing maintenance. The Anne Murray Centre has successfully fostered tourism in the area and has promoted awareness of the music of Nova Scotia and Canada.

Anne Murray was also instrumental in the construction of the Dr. Carson and Marion Murray Community Centre in Springhill, Nova Scotia. Murray served as the honorary chair of the fundraising campaign to replace the town arena that collapsed after a peewee hockey game in 2002. Named for her parents, the Dr. Carson and Marion Murray Community Centre sports an NHL-size ice sheet with seating for 800 people, a walking track, multi-purpose room, community room with seating for up to 300, and a gym. The Dr. Carson and Marion Murray Community Centre has become an integral part of the Springhill community since opening on September 15, 2004.

Murray's personal success combined with her visible love and support for Springhill was featured in the article, “Women of Success – Impact on The Economy of Their Hometowns,” in Progressive Choices – Canadian Women In Business magazine (Summer/Fall 2004 edition).

When a devastating tsunami brought tragedy on Christmas Eve of 2004, Anne Murray joined other Canadian music stars in the Canada for Asia Telethon, a three-hour, tsunami relief concert broadcast on CBC Television (January 13, 2005) to support CARE Canada’s efforts. Bryan Adams and Murray closed the show with a duet, "What Would It Take".

Environmental awareness is another area for which Murray is passionate, and has been a public supporter of renowned Canadian environmentalist and geneticist Dr. David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge.

Anne Murray has also been involved in a variety of charitable organizations. In addition to being the Honorary National Chairperson of the Canadian Save The Children Fund, she has served as a spokeswoman for many charities throughout her career - most recently Colon Cancer Canada. On May 20, 2009, Colon Cancer Canada launched the inaugural Anne Murray Charity Golf Classic. Over $150,000 was raised through the event.

Murray's father, Dr. Carson Murray, died in 1980 at the age of 72 from complications of leukemia. Her mother, the former Marion Margaret Burke, died April 10, 2006 at the age of 92 after suffered a series of strokes during heart surgery.

A longtime golf enthusiast, Murray made history in October 2003 at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, NY by becoming the first woman to score a hole-in-one on the 108-yard, par 3, 17th hole at the Kaluhyat Golf Club.

On May 11, 2007, Golf For Women magazine named Murray the world's best female celebrity golfer, noting her 11 handicap.

TV work

Murray has had five highly-rated US specials on CBS (over 40 million viewers each), countless Canadian specials on CBC (such as Anne Murray in Nova Scotia, Intimate Evening with Anne Murray, Anne Murray RSVP, A Special Anne Murray Christmas, Legends & Friends, Greatest Hits II, What A Wonderful World, Ladies Night Show, Anne Murray in Walt Disney World and Anne Murray's Classic Christmas) and has appeared on Solid Gold, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Dean Martin Summer Show, Singalong Jubilee, Dinah!, The Today Show, The Mike Douglas Show, Christmas in Washington, Boston Pops, The Oprah Winfrey Show, 20/20, CNN, Perry Como's Christmas in New Mexico, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, Night of a 100 Stars, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, The Pat Sajak Show, Royal Canadian Air Farce and Good Morning America. Her 2005 CBC special Anne Murray: The Music of My Life broke ratings records for a Thursday night, with more than 7 million Canadian viewers tuned in. The guests on her TV specials have included Julio Iglesias, Patti LaBelle, Céline Dion, Bryan Adams, Dusty Springfield, Bananarama, Dionne Warwick, John Denver, k.d. lang, Kris Kristofferson, Barenaked Ladies, Alan Thicke, Roch Voisine, Glen Campbell, Valerie Harper, Ruth Buzzi, Rita MacNeil, Andrea Martin, The Rankin Family, Diana Krall, Dawn Langstroth, Jann Arden, and Miss Piggy. The record for the highest-rated variety special in Canadian television history is Anne Murray's Family Christmas, which garnered a 43 per cent share on CBC with 4.2 million viewers.

Discography

Main article: Anne Murray discography

Awards and honors

Main article: List of Anne Murray awards

References

  1. Dean, Maury (2003). Rock-N-Roll Gold Rush. Algora Publishing. p. 34. ISBN 0875862071. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  2. "CBC News - Arts - Singer Anne Murray to host Walk of Fame gala". CBC.ca. Retrieved 2010-02-04.
  3. "Review - All of Me, by Anne Murray - The Globe and Mail". TheGlobeAndMail.com. Retrieved 2010-02-04.
  4. "Review - Anne Murray takes fans on nostalgic trip". Canada.com. Retrieved 2010-02-04.
  5. ^ "RIAA - Gold & Platinum". RIAA.com. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  6. "Celebrities:Annue Murray".
  7. Christian Lyrics - Anne Murray Biography, Discography
  8. "Songwriters Hall of Fame - 2008 Award and Induction Ceremony". SongwritersHallofFame.org. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  9. ^ "Anne Murray - Murray Named Top Female Celebrity Golfer - Contactmusic News". ContactMusic.com. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  10. "CHSR 97.9 FM... 49 years of service". CHSRfm.ca. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  11. "Anne Murray - NNDB.COM". NNDB.com. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference allofme was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. "Emotional Rescue - Eating Disorders and Struggles, Coping and Overcoming Illness, Anne Murray - People.com". People.com. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  14. "The Anne Murray Centre". AnneMurrayCentre.com. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  15. "Leisure Services - Town of Springhill, Nova Scotia". Town.Springhill.ns.ca. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  16. "The National - Tsunami in Asia inspires musicians to help - CBC Archives". Archives.CBC.ca. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
  17. "Anne Murray - singer/songwriter". DavidSuzuki.org. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  18. "Billboard - Google Books - Anne Murray Save the Children Fund". Books.Google.com. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  19. "Colon Cancer Canada - 2009 Anne Murray Charity Golf Classic". ColonCancerCanada.ca. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  20. "Anne Murray - Anne Murray Scores a Hole In One". ContactMusic.com. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  21. "CTV INC. - So You Think You Can Dance Canada's Top 20 Revealed on CTV, Oct. 1". NewsWire.ca. Retrieved 2010-02-06.
  • Millard, Bob (1998). "Anne Murray". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 361–2.
  • Grills, Barry (1996) Snowbird: The Story of Anne Murray. Kingston, ON: Quarry Press.
  • Livingstone, David (1981) Anne Murray: The Story So Far. Scarborough: Prentice Hall Canada, Inc.

External links

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