Helen Reddy obit

Trailblazing Australian singer Helen Reddy dead at 78

 

She was not on the list.

Australian singer Helen Reddy, who became a global superstar on the back of her hit I Am Woman, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 78.

The Melbourne-born Reddy, whose trailblazing life was dramatised in the recent bio-pic I Am Woman, was regarded as the queen of 1970s pop with her hits including Delta Dawn, Angie Baby, Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress) and Ain't No Way To Treat A Lady.

After arriving in New York as a 24-year-old single mother of a three-year-old with just over $US200 to her name, she overcame years of struggle in the US to become the world's top-selling female singer in 1973 and 1974.

She won a Grammy for I Am Woman, had her own weekly prime-time television variety show and branched into an acting career on screen and stage that included a Golden Globe nomination for Airport 1975.

The stirring anthem that became her best-known hit turned her into a feminist icon.

Accepting her Grammy - the first Australian woman after opera singer Joan Sutherland to win one - she famously thanked "God, because She makes everything possible".

Reddy was born into a show business family in 1941 and began performing as a child. In 1966, she won a singing competition on the television show Bandstand to travel to New York and audition for a recording contract. When that opportunity vanished on arriving, she stayed in the US.

After marrying Jeff Wald, who was her manager, Reddy's recording career initially took off with the B-side to her second single - a cover of I Don't Know How To Love Him from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Its moderate chart success earned her a contract with Capitol Records.

She went on to have three number one hits and another dozen songs in the US top 40.

It was 1972's I Am Woman - she wrote the empowering lyrics ("I am woman, hear me roar/ In numbers too big to ignore") with Australian singer-songwriter and friend Ray Burton providing the music - that became her enduring legacy.

At a time when a woman could not get a credit card or a mortgage in her own name, Reddy emerged to become one of the world's highest paid entertainers.

Diagnosed with dementia in 2015, she had been living in a nursing home for retired Hollywood talents in Los Angeles.

Unjoo Moon's biopic, which stars Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Reddy, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival late last year and only launched on the streaming service Stan (owned by this masthead's publisher, Nine) this month.

Moon, who lives in Los Angeles with her cinematographer husband Dion Beebe, met Reddy at a G'Day USA dinner seven years ago and they spoke for two hours. Having grown up seeing the galvanising effect of I Am Woman on her mother, she became determined to make a film about her life.

"When I started listening to her story, even though it was about the '70s and really captured that moment, it felt so utterly relevant to me as a woman," Moon said.

Cobham-Hervey has described Reddy as strong, passionate and curious, with a mission to change the world.

"She's had this extraordinarily huge and brilliant life," she said recently. "It's hard not to be inspired by someone who takes on the world like that." 

Of Reddy's eight subsequent single releases on Capitol, five reached the Easy Listening Top 50 – including "Candle on the Water", from the 1977 Disney film Pete's Dragon (which starred Reddy). Only three ranked on the Billboard Hot 100: "The Happy Girls" (No. 57) – the follow-up to "You're My World" and, besides "I Am Woman", Reddy's only chart item which she co-wrote – and the disco tracks "Ready or Not" (No. 73) and "Make Love to Me" (No. 60), the latter a cover of an Australian hit by Kelly Marie – which gave Reddy a lone R&B chart ranking at No. 59. Reddy had also ranked at No. 98 on the country chart with "Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler", the B-side to "The Happy Girls".