Melissa Manchester Biography | Melissa Manchester
Melissa Manchester (born February 15, 1951) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Since the 1970s, her songs have been carried by adult contemporary radio stations. She has also appeared on television, in films, and on stage.
Grammy Award-winning artist Melissa Manchester was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, to a musical family. Her father was a bassoonist for the New York Metropolitan Opera.
Her mother was one of the first women to design and found her own clothing firm, Ruth Manchester Ltd. Manchester hails from a Jewish background. Manchester started a singing career at an early age.
She learned the piano and harpsichord at the Manhattan School of Music, began singing commercial jingles at age 15, and became a staff writer for Chappell Music while attending Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts.
She studied songwriting at New York University with Paul Simon. Manchester played the Manhattan club scene, where she was discovered by Barry Manilow, who introduced her to Bette Midler. In 1971 she became a member of the Harlettes, the back-up singers for Midler.
Manchester made a brief speaking appearance as “Yoko Ono” on the 1972 album National Lampoon Radio Dinner, on the track entitled “Magical Misery Tour”, and as the singer in “Deteriorate”.
Her debut album, Home to Myself, was released in 1973; Manchester co-wrote many of its songs with Carole Bayer Sager. Two years later, Manchester’s album Melissa produced her first top-ten hit, “Midnight Blue”, which enjoyed 17 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The song’s peak position was #6 for the week of August 9, 1975.
She also performed the song live on Burt Sugarman’s television series Midnight Special in 1974. Manchester appeared with Richie Havens, Melanie, and Frankie Valli as a contributor and performer in the 1977 NBC special documentary “How the Beatles Changed the World”.
Manchester collaborated with Kenny Loggins to co-write Loggins’ 1978 hit duet with Stevie Nicks, “Whenever I Call You Friend”. She would later record this for her 1979 Melissa Manchester album.
She guest-starred on the CBS-TV daytime soap opera Search for Tomorrow to teach the main character, who played a singer-songwriter, the essentials of the craft.
In 1979, Manchester reached #10 with her version of Peter Allen’s “Don’t Cry Out Loud”, for which she received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Female Vocal Performance.
In 1979, she performed two nominated songs on the Academy Awards show: “I’ll Never Say Goodbye” (from The Promise) and “Through the Eyes of Love” (theme song from Ice Castles). The winning song that year was “It Goes Like It Goes”, from Norma Rae.
In 1982, she released the smash “You Should Hear How She Talks About You,” which won the 1983 Grammy for Best Pop Female Vocal Performance, beating out Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, Juice Newton, and Laura Branigan. The song itself reached #4 in Cash Box7 and #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart as well as #10 Adult Contemporary.
Manchester continued to place singles on the Adult Contemporary charts throughout the 1980s. Another top-ten entry on the AC chart was a 1989 updating of Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By”.
The single was pulled from her album Tribute, which honored some of the singers that influenced her style. In 1992 she sang the title song for the animated musical Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland, written by the Sherman Brothers and accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra.
She appeared as herself during a two-day guest appearance on the ABC-TV daytime soap General Hospital to sing the song for Robin Scorpio and her AIDS-afflicted boyfriend Stone Cates.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Manchester alternated recording with acting, appearing with Bette Midler in the film For the Boys, on the television series Blossom, and co-writing (with book writer-lyricist Jeffrey Sweet) and starring in the musical I Sent a Letter to My Love based on the Bernice Rubens novel of the same name.
In 1990, Manchester could be heard performing “I Wish I Knew”, played over the opening credits of the CBS television drama The Trials of Rosie O’Neill. In addition, she opened game 6 of the 1991 World Series singing the U.S. National Anthem.
Manchester composed and recorded the soundtrack to the direct-to-video Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure (2001).
In 2004, Manchester returned with her first album in 10 years, When I Look Down That Road. While touring to support the album, she was praised for her still “powerful voice” and for “reinventing herself while staying true to what made her popular.”
In April 2007, she returned to the theater, starring in the Chicago production of HATS! The Musical, a show to which she and Sharon Vaughn contributed two songs.
Also in 2007, she recorded a duet with Barry Manilow as a cover of the Carole King classic “You’ve Got a Friend” on Manilow’s The Greatest Songs of the Seventies.
In 2008, Manchester released a new single, “The Power of Ribbons”, to digital retailers. Proceeds of the single benefit breast cancer research.
In 2011 an independent film named Dirty Girl was released with many of Manchester’s songs used throughout the film, five of which made it onto the soundtrack. Manchester made a non-speaking cameo appearance as the pianist who accompanies the lead character’s rendition of “Don’t Cry Out Loud”.
In 2013, Manchester announced that she was recording her 20th studio album, You Gotta Love the Life, her first since When I Look Down That Road. She subsequently launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to independently release the album.
In an interview with NPR, Manchester talks about the crowd-funding experience and relays the back-story behind the single, “Feelin’ for You”. A drunk in a juke joint approached Manchester and asked if she was married, to which she replied, “Yes, very happily.” The drunk replied, “Too bad, cause I got a feelin’ for you.”
“Feelin’ for You”, written by Manchester and Sara Niemietz, includes a solo by Keb’ Mo’. The single was released on January 9, 2015, and premiered at #2 on the Smooth jazz charts.
You Gotta Love the Life was released on February 10, 2015, and hit #17 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart for the week of February 28, 2015.
A second single, “Big Light”, featuring a duet with Al Jarreau along with an accompanying music video, was released for radio on June 15, 2015.
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Melissa Manchester among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
Table of Contents
Melissa Manchester Age
Grammy Award-winning artist Melissa Manchester was born in New York where her father was a bassoonist for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He introduced her to all the classics, and by the age of 15, Melissa was already a published poet. She was born on February 15, 1951, she is 68 years old as of 2019
Net Worth
Melissa Manchester is a famous people who is best known as a Pop Singer. She was initially discovered by the two singing legends, Bette Midler and Barry Manilow. Melissa Manchester is a member of the famous Pop Singer list.
Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter whose first hit was “Midnight Blue” in 1975. She has appeared in many films and on television.
Melissa Manchester in 1979, For the Working Girl in 1980, Hey Ricky in 1982, Emergency in 1983, Mathematics in 1985, Tribute in 1989, If My Heart Had Wings in 1995, Joy in 1997, The Colors of Christmas in 1998, I Sent a Letter to My Love in 1998, When I Look Down That Road in 2004, You Gotta Love the Life in 2015, and The Fellas in 2017.
Her single “Midnight Blue” reached #1 on the US Adult Contemporary chart. In 1982 she won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “You Should Hear How She Talks About You”. Melissa Manchester is an American singer, songwriter, and actress who has a net worth of $6 million.
Melissa Manchester Husband, Married
Melissa Manchester is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Since the 1970s, her songs have been carried by adult contemporary radio stations. She has also appeared on television, in films, and on stage.
Who is she dating right now?
Kevin DeRemer and Melissa Manchester have been married for 37 years since 1st May 1982. Melissa Manchester has been in a relationship with Larry Brezner (1972 – 1979).
Midnight Blue (Melissa Manchester song)
“Midnight Blue” is a title of a Top Ten hit single by Melissa Manchester that was taken from her 1975 album, Melissa. Billboard magazine described the song as “a classically elegant quiet ballad about a pair of longtime lovers putting aside their aggravations until the dawn in order to try making it one more time in memory of all their old times together.”
The song had been written by Manchester in 1973 as her first collaboration with Carole Bayer Sager, who would be Manchester’s regular lyricist over the next five years; Manchester would recall: “the songs that I wrote with Carole…all came out of conversations.
Therefore the tone of the songs was very conversational. The listener always feels like they are in the moment when that first line is uttered.”
According to Manchester the genesis of “Midnight Blue” was a conversation she and Bayer Sager “had about our young husbands, and how as young women we didn’t know how to get through the hard times that every relationship has”; the song was essentially finished but still lacking a title when either Manchester or Bayer Sager said: “Midnight Blue” which Manchester opines “was the perfect fit for the song’s overall feeling”.
After meeting Manchester backstage after Bette Midler’s Carnegie Hall concert of 23 June 1972 Bayer Sager suggested she and Manchester write a song to cut as a demo, the result being “Midnight Blue”.
Although Manchester’s first two album releases, Home to Myself and Bright Eyes in respectively 1973 and 1974, would overall feature eight songs she had co-written with Bayer Sager, Manchester herself would not record “Midnight Blue” until 1975.
The demo of “Midnight Blue” was submitted by Sager and Manchester to producer Vini Poncia in hopes of having his purported client Dionne Warwick record the song: instead, the demo convinced Poncia to record the singer of the demo who was Manchester herself.
Poncia waited for almost two years – allowing Manchester to fulfill her obligations to the producers of her two Bell Records albums — before approaching Manchester with regard to producing her.
In the interim Manchester had personally pitched “Midnight Blue” to Dusty Springfield according to Springfield’s friend Sue Cameron who recalls Manchester visiting Springfield’s Laurel Canyon home and playing Springfield the demo of “Midnight Blue” – Cameron (quote): “She told Melissa no. Melissa leaves the house. I went: ‘Are you crazy?’”
An alternate background scenario for Manchester’s recording “Midnight Blue” is related by Carole Bayer Sager in her autobiography: according to Bayer Sager she “pretty much stalked” Richard Perry to “get him to listen to our song. Finally, after I cornered him at an industry party he agreed to listen to the demo of ‘Midnight Blue’.
” Bayer Sager played the demo for Perry at his Manhattan hotel suite, first telling him: “The girl I wrote the song with his singing here and she wants to record it…and I was hoping if you liked it maybe you’d produce it.”
Bayer Sager recalls that after hearing the demo Perry told her: “This song could be a big hit. I have a young producer who works for me: Vini Poncia, and I think he could make a really good record with Melissa as the artist.
I’d executive produce it.” According to Bayer Sager, Perry himself played the completed track of “Midnight Blue” for Arista Records president Clive Davis who greenlit Poncia producing Manchester’s album Melissa from which “Midnight Blue” was issued as the lead single on May 1975 (the single edit trimmed 29 seconds off the album track’s outro).
On the original tracklisting for the album Melissa the track’s title is spelled “Midnite Blue”, a spelling which was retained for the track’s single release in Australia.
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