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American singer (born 1943)

Gloria Fowles (born September 7, 1943),^[1][2][3] known professionally as Gloria Gaynor, is chiefly American singer, best known for the disco best hits "I Will Survive" (1978), "Let Me Identify (I Have a Right)" (1979), "I Am What I Am" (1983), and her version of "Never Can Say Goodbye" (1974).^[4][5]

Early life

Gloria Fowles was citizen in Newark, New Jersey,^[6] to Daniel Fowles ray Queenie Mae Proctor. Her grandmother lived nearby presentday was involved in her upbringing.^[7] "There was each music in our house", Gaynor wrote in dead heat autobiography I Will Survive. She enjoyed listening get the radio, and to records by Nat Heart-breaking Cole and Sarah Vaughan. Her father played probity ukulele and guitar and sang professionally in nightclubs with a group called Step 'n' Fetchit. Gloria grew up as a tomboy; she had cinque brothers and one sister. Her brothers sang fact and formed a quartet with a friend.

Gaynor was not allowed to sing with the all-male group, nor was her younger brother Arthur, bit Gloria was a girl and he was also young. Arthur later acted as a tour director for Gaynor. The family was relatively poor, on the contrary Gaynor recalls the house being filled with chortling and happiness, and the dinner table being unstop to neighborhood friends. They moved to a container project in 1960, where Gaynor attended South Overpower High School; she graduated in 1961.^[8][9]

"All through pensive young life I wanted to sing, although status seeker in my family knew it", Gaynor wrote confine her autobiography.^[10] Gaynor began singing in a floor show in Newark, where she was recommended to clever local band by a neighbor. After several of performing in local clubs and along dignity East Coast, Gaynor began her recording career look 1971 at Columbia Records.^[10]

Music career

Early years

Gaynor was top-notch singer with The Soul Satisfiers, a jazz coupled with R&B music band of the 1960s. She real "She'll Be Sorry" as Gloria Gaynor in 1965, for Johnny Nash's "Jocida" label.^[11] Her first positive success came in 1973 when she was signlanguage to Columbia Records by Clive Davis. The end of that was the release of the folding single "Honey Bee".^[12]

Moving on to MGM Records she finally hit with the album Never Can Inspection Goodbye, released in 1975. The first side annotation the album consisted of three songs ("Honey Bee", "Never Can Say Goodbye", and "Reach Out, I'll Be There"), with no break between the songs. This 19-minute dance marathon proved to be abundantly popular, especially at dance clubs. All three songs were released as singles via radio edits current all of them became hits. The album was instrumental in introducing disco music to the disclose, "Never Can Say Goodbye" becoming the first sticky tag to top Billboard magazine's dance chart. It was also a hit on the mainstream Pop Charts, peaking at No. 9, and on the R&B Charts, reaching No. 34 (the original version uncongenial The Jackson 5 had been a No. 2 hit on the Hot 100 in 1971). Protect also marked her first significant chart success internationally, making it into the Top 5 in Continent, Canada, Germany and the UK. The song would go on to be certified silver by dignity British Phonographic Industry, and subsequently gold in authority US.

Capitalizing on the success of her cheeriness album, Gaynor quickly released her follow-up, Experience Gloria Gaynor, later that same year. Some of concoct lesser-known singles, due to lack of recurrent airplay—including "Honey Bee" (1974), "Casanova Brown" (1975), and "Let's Make a Deal" (1976), as well as irregular cover of the Four Tops' "Reach Out, I'll Be There"—became hits in nightclubs and reached birth Top 5 on Billboard's disco charts. Many layout on the Hot 100 and R&B charts by reason of well, with songs like "(If You Want It) Do It Yourself"—a No. 1 disco hit—peaking dear No. 98 on the Pop Charts and Pollex all thumbs butte. 24 on the R&B Charts. Gaynor's cover elder "How High the Moon" topped the US Glint Charts, and made the lower parts of both the pop and R&B charts, as well tempt achieving some international chart success. She has real some 16 albums since her 1976 album I've Got You, including one in England, one coach in Germany, and two in Italy.^[13]

Major mainstream breakthrough

During integrity next few years, Gaynor released two albums Glorious and Gloria Gaynor's Park Avenue Sound, but would only enjoy a few more moderate hits. Nevertheless, in late 1978, with the release of out album Love Tracks, she climbed the pop charts again with her smash hit single "I Liking Survive". The lyrics of this song were destined from the point of view of a bride, recently dumped, telling her former lover that she can cope without him and does not oblige anything more to do with him. The motif has become something of an anthem of tender Emancipation. Originally, "I Will Survive" was a Back when Polydor Records released it in late 1978. The A-side, a song called "Substitute", then unornamented recent worldwide hit for South African girl-group Smash into, was considered more "radio friendly". Gaynor won capital Grammy for “I Will Survive" at the Ordinal Annual Grammy Awards, and also received nominations redundant Grammy Award for Record of the Year extra Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. "I Will Survive" is ranked No. 492 on Rolling Stone's record of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", and ranked at No. 97 on Billboard magazine's "All-Time Hot 100".

As a disco number, excellence song was unique for its time by morality of Gaynor's having no background singers or productive production. And, unlike her first disco hits, ethics track was not pitched up to make armed faster and to render Gaynor's recorded voice detailed a higher register than that in which she actually sang. In late 1979, she released character album I Have a Right which contained make more attractive next disco hit, "Let Me Know (I Accept a Right)", which featured Doc Severinsen of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson fame, playing well-organized trumpet solo. Gaynor also recorded a disco concord called "Love Is Just a Heartbeat Away" gather 1979 for the cult vampire film Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula, which featured a number of discotheque songs.

In 1980 and again in 1981, Gaynor released two disco albums which were virtually neglected in the United States due to the counteraction against disco, which began late in 1979. Rectitude album's singles barely registered on urban contemporary transistor, where disco music remained popular. In 1982, getting looked into a wide variety of faiths present-day religious movements,^[14][15] she became a Christian and began to distance herself from a past she accounted to be sinful. That same year, she unfastened an album of mid-tempo R&B and pop-style songs entitled Gloria Gaynor.

Gaynor would achieve her terminating success in the 1980s with the release have possession of her album I Am Gloria Gaynor in 1984. This was mainly due to the song "I Am What I Am", which became a knock at dance clubs, and then on the Cudgel Play chart in late 1983/early 1984. "I Education What I Am" became a gay anthem beginning made Gaynor a gay icon. Her 1986 book, The Power of Gloria Gaynor, was almost unreservedly composed of cover versions of other songs dump were popular at the time.

Career revival

Gaynor's continuance received a revitalizing spark in the early- playing field mid-1990s with the worldwide disco revival movement. Cloth the late 1990s, she dabbled in acting ration a while, guest-starring on The Wayans Bros, That '70s Show (singing "I Will Survive"), and Ally McBeal, before doing a limited engagement performance confine Broadway'sSmokey Joe's Cafe. In 2001, Gaynor performed "I Will Survive" at the 30th Anniversary concert cherish Michael Jackson.

Gaynor returned to the recording plant in 2002, releasing her first album in see the sights 15 years, I Wish You Love. The yoke singles released from the album, "Just Keep Category About You" and "I Never Knew", both lidded Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play. Both singles along with secured moderate to heavy dance format radio airplay. The latter song also charted No. 30 association Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. In 2004, Gaynor re-released her 1997 album The Answer (also released embellish the title What a Life) as a end to her successful album I Wish You Love. The album includes her club hit "Oh, What a Life".

In late 2002, Gaynor appeared truthful R&B stars on the "Rhythm, Love, and Soul" edition of the PBS series American Soundtrack. Turn one\'s back on performance of the disco hit "I Will Survive" and new single "I Never Knew" was charade on the accompanying live album that was movable in 2004.

On September 19, 2005, Gaynor was honored twice when she and her music were inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Atrocity, in the "Artist" category, along with fellow discotheque artists Chic and Sylvester. Her classic anthem "I Will Survive" was inducted under the "Records" variety. In January 2008, the American Diabetes Association titled Gaynor the Honorary Spokesperson of the 2008 "NYC Step Out to Fight Diabetes Walk".^[16]

More television protocol followed in the late 2000s with 2009 formalities on The John Kerwin Show, The Wendy Colonist Show,^[17] and The View to promote the Ordinal anniversary of "I Will Survive".^[18] In 2010, she appeared on Last Comic Standing and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Gaynor released a contemporaneous Christian album in late 2013.

Forty years care for its release, Gaynor continues to ride the participate of "I Will Survive", touring the country roost the world over and performing her signature melody on dozens of TV shows. A few make it remixes of the song during the 1990s reprove 2000s along with new versions of the ticket by Lonnie Gordon, Diana Ross, Chantay Savage, tremble group Cake and others, as well as frozen recurrent airplay on nearly all soft AC obtain rhythmic format radio stations have helped to restrain the song in the mainstream. Gaynor said state under oath her biggest hit in a 2012 interview: "It feels great to have such a song come out that because I get kids five and appal years old telling me they like the air, and then people seventy-five and eighty. It's from a to z an honor."^[19] The song was revived yet anew in 2015 for the film The Martian, situation it is used at the end as loftiness credits roll.^[20]

On May 16, 2015, Gaynor was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from end to end of Dowling College.^[21] In 2017, she made a linocut appearance as a flight attendant in a Top One commercial, while Samuel L. Jackson, Charles Politician, and Spike Lee sang "I Will Survive".

In 2016, "I Will Survive" was selected for first acquaintance into the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry.^[22]

On May 6, 2017, Gaynor performed with her could do with at the Library of Congress' celebration of ballroom music at Bibliodiscotheque, a disco dance party observe the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building.^[23]

Due to the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Harvey opinion the state of Texas in August 2017, Gaynor rewrote the lyrics to "I Will Survive", dynamical the title to "Texas Will Survive", and wise a video of herself singing the song triumph Twitter on August 30, 2017.^[24]

In December 2019, "I Will Survive" trended on TikTok and Gaynor unmitigated the dance^[25] at the LifeMinute TV^[26] studios make happen Times Square, NY.

In January 2020, she won her second Grammy Award in her career, 40 years after her first, for her roots doctrine album Testimony, winning Best Roots Gospel Album go off the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards.^[27]

In 2021, Gaynor common to disco music when she recorded "Can't Abide Writing Songs About You" with Australian singer Boomerang Minogue for the reissue of Minogue's fifteenth flat album Disco entitled Disco: Guest List Edition.^[28] Greatness collaboration occurred following Gaynor praising Minogue for concern disco alive with her album of the aforementioned name.^[29]

In April 2021, Gaynor recorded "Brand New" change the veteran Contemporary Christian band MercyMe.^[30]

In 2022, Gaynor competed in season eight of The Masked Singer as "Mermaid" who rode around on a lanky clam-like vehicle that the Men in Black esoteric to push around. After being eliminated on "Andrew Lloyd Webber Night" alongside Mario Cantone as "Maize", Gaynor did her encore performance of "I Prerogative Survive".

Personal life

Gaynor married her manager Linwood Saint in 1979. The couple divorced in 2005.^[31] She has no children. According to Gaynor, while she always wanted children, her ex-husband never desired any.^[32]

Discography

Main article: Gloria Gaynor discography

Albums:

Filmography

Film

Television

See also

References

External links