Marcia Hines

Her records sales during the decade between the mid-Seventies and mid-Eighties made Marcia Hines Australia's all-time most successful female singer, success facilitated by the arrival of the 'Countdown era'. Unlike her predecessors, including Renee Geyer, Marcia was saved from the grind of regular live performances to establish a strong fan base and able to go straight to concert-scale appearances to support her hit records.

Marcia was born in Boston on July 20, 1953. As a small child she began singing at church, and made her first solo appearance at the age of nine at a church festival. Three years on Marcia had started singing with rhythm and blues groups around Boston at dances and church socials. When she was fourteen she won a scholarship to the New England Conservatorium Of Music, but only lasted three months, much more interested "in the Rolling Stones than Traviata". A month after her sixteenth birthday her babysitter took Marcia along to the famous Woodstock Pop Festival. She was still sixteen when she first arrived in Australia in April 1970.

It was the age of the musical 'Hair' with productions of the hit "rock musical" being mounted all around the world. What the rest of the world didn't have at the time was a huge supply of homegrown black female singers, a necessary commodity for a staging of 'Hair'. Back in Boston Marcia's best friend told her how her sister Donna Summer had gone to Germany to appear in their 'Hair', and suggested that Marcia might do the same. When Marcia auditioned for Harry M Miller's Australian 'Hair' she half-imagined she was going to Austria!

Despite the fact that she was pregnant for much of her time touring with the Australian production of 'Hair' Marcia won the hearts of audiences with the quality of her performances and, after the birth of daughter Deni, she became the first black singer in the world to play Mary Magdeline in 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. When that show ended in February 1974 Marcia signed on as singer with the jazz-orchestra the Daly-Wilson Big Band, which included a tour of Australia, a recital at the White House in Washington, supporting B.B.King and Wilson Pickett in Las Vegas and a month-long tour of Russia. But Marcia's future was in her adopted Australia.

She signed a solo recording deal in July 1974 with Wizard Records (run by the former Rob EG, Robbie Porter), and released her version of James Taylor's 'Fire And Rain', broduced by Robbie. From the moment she sang that song in a single spotlight sitting on a stool on 'Countdown' the record's fate was assured. The single reached the top twenty nationally, but more importantly, the follow-up album 'Marcia Shines' went on to top the 50,000 copies sold mark. The second album, October 76's 'Shining', recorded in Los Angeles, was heralded by another, even bigger hit, Marcia's version of Dusty Springfield's 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself'. As she toured, supported by the cream of Australian musicians (including Mark Kennedy, Jackie Orszaczky, Stephen Housden, Sunil De Silver) 'Shining' topped the 150,000 sales figure. In 1977 she reached the national #1 single spot with 'You'.

In 1978 Marcia Hines was offered her own six-part ABC TV series, returning for a second season in '79. In retrospect, the series probably tried to be too sophisticated and left Marcia's pop career with an identity crisis not helped by a forced two year recording hiatus. After she returned to recording, via Warner Brothers, the successes were less frequent and less spectacular.

In the years that followed Marcia Hines faded in and out of Australia's consciousness in line with her own personal needs (relationships, the onset and dealing diabetes), irregular concert and TV performances. In 1994 she released her first album in 12 years, 'Right Here And Now'. She spent two years with the Rockmelons working on 1999's 'Time Of Our Lives' with songs sourced from all over the world.

Marcia Hines stepped back into the public spotlight in 2003 as one of the high profile judges on Australian Idol.