Chicago Blues Reunion Guest Marcy Levy

Marcy Levy was born and bred in Detroit, Michigan. Not only did she see some of the greats-"Detroit had a huge influence on me: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin. I used to sneak into venues and see bands like Janis Joplin, Cream, Black Sabbath, MC5, Iggy Pop". She later went on to actually sing with her idols, Aretha and Stevie Wonder. She took up the violin at age 8 (as did her great grandfather who, she recently discovered was a concert violinist), then ukulele, and guitar by age 11. She was at school with the likes of Don Was, "very much into folky blues" and used to go alone, into the worst areas of Detroit, underage, sneaking into clubs to see Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. At age 18, she joined her very first band called, "The Bad Luck and Troubles Blues Band". Eventually, came along a band called Julia, big in Detroit, who peaked at opening for David Bowie in 1972. Touring with Julia around Michigan got them a call to audition for Bob Seger which they got and went on the road with him which was Marcy's first major break.

After 18 months, Marcy moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to form a band with some of Seger's group at the height of the Shelter days. Loads of musicians used to jam together: members of the Gap Band, Leon Russell, Carl Radle, (the bassist in Derek and the Dominoes)...So when Eric Clapton was looking for a new band, Carl Radle mentioned Marcy and her band; Slowhand paid them a visit and hired them all on the spot and they went on to record the 461 Ocean Boulevard album together. Marcy couldn't join the band then, because she had already made a commitment to work with Leon Russell for nine months touring the states.

When the tour with Leon finished, Marcy was invited to Jamaica to see her old band just as they were recording Clapton's "There's One in Every Crowd" album. She ended up singing backing vocals and three days later Eric asked Marcy to join the band. Three days progressed into four years of touring, writing and recording with Clapton. Among the co-writes with Eric were: "Innocent Times", for his LP "There's No reason To Cry "on which she sang the lead vocal; "Hungry" (written with Dickie Sims, the keyboardist from Tulsa), "Rollit", "The Core", Marcy says:

"We'd just sit in the studio in those days with no preparation and luckily come up with the goods".... Later, Marcy, George Terry, and Eric went on to write the 1977 classic "Lay Down Sally". The song won a BMI Award in 1996 for two million plays so far, a feat that basically means that if you played the record back to back it would take you at least 11 years to achieve.

At the end of 1978, Marcy wanted to kick off her own career and moved to Los Angeles, California. She ended up doing lots of session work for people like Aretha Franklin, George Duke, Stanley Clarke, Al Jarreau, Bette Midler, Phil Collins, and also worked with some of the greatest producers of all time, such as Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin, Glyn Johns, Tom Dowd, Roger Hawkins. There were also sessions for Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager, Leiber and Stoller...the writing for Chaka Khan, Belinda Carlisle...even co-writing the song, Philip Bailey's hit "Walking on the Chinese Wall" and sang on and co-wrote "One Way" for Al Jarreau, doing session work for Jeffrey Osbourne and many more.

In 1985, Marcy co-wrote another song for Eric Clapton called, "Tangled in Love". The song was presented to him and she was asked to join his band again after going down to Montserrat where he was recording his "Behind the Sun" Album. The highlight of that whole stint was doing Live Aid in June of 1985 in Philadelphia, performing on a revolving stage to an audience of around 105,000 people, broadcast to millions around the world.

A year later Marcy decided to get back to her own career and came home to Los Angeles, only to be introduced to Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and his wife, Siobhan Fahey. Siobhan was in the process of leaving her band, Banarama, at the time. She was looking to start a band which would end up being called, "Shakespear's Sister", and Marcy was eventually asked to become a part of it. During that time Marcy changed her name to Marcella Detroit to give her a new lease on life. Marcy always injected her soul/r&b roots into the group. They ended up recording two albums together, the first one being "Sacred Heart" and the second one, "Hormonally Yours"; the latter album won them many awards in England, and their single from that album (on which Marcy was mainly vocally featured) called "Stay", was number one for eight weeks in England and also was in the top five in the Billboard charts in America in 1992.

The band split up in 1993 due to personality differences. Marcy went on to do a solo album in 1994 on London records entitled, "Jewel" which did well in England, Europe and Australia. After that, she released an album in 1996 on her co-owned label with her manager at the time, called "Feeler" which was very successful in Japan and Australia with some moderate success in Europe. In 2001, she released another album on her own label called, "Dancing Madly Sideways" which was available only on her website. This record was quite adventurous and received some very positive recognition from US Billboard magazine.

In the year 2000, Marcy was introduced to Chicago blues great, Barry Goldberg, the keyboardist who is co-writer, [along with Jerry Goffin], of the classic, "Use My Imagination", the major hit recorded by Gladys Knight and the Pips. Barry has played with many blues legends including Muddy Waters, as well as Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and he produced an album for Tracy Nelson, with her classic rendition of "Mother Earth" and "Down So Low".

After performing with Barry in some clubs in Los Angeles, as well as doing the annual San Francisco Blues Festival in September of 2002, Marcy was happy to join Barry, along with blues greats, Corky Siegel, Charlie Musselwhite, Tracy Nelson, Harvey Mandel and Nick Gravenites as the "Chicago Blues Reunion" appearing at the annual Chicago Blues Festival in June 2003. Marcy was due to be part of CBR's current touring and recording, but due to conflicting shedules she was not able to be part of the project.

Through Barry Goldberg, in 2003, Marcy was introduced to the talented artist and guitarist, Carlos Guitarlos. She has been seen performing with Carlos worldwide, and has been vocally featured on his most recent cd release, "Hell Can Wait", as well as having penned a song on it, entitled, "I Found Someone", which they wrote together on stage one night.

In the past two years, Marcy signed to a British publishing company called A7, a small, but proactive organization that has sent her traveling all over the globe, writing pop hits for various major artists worldwide. Marcy is currently enjoying the success of her co-writing with a platinum seling song in Brazil, and is also the sole writer of a song called, "I Believe", [also on her solo 'Marcella Detroit' , "Jewel" cd] , which was recorded by an artist in Germany called Joana Zimmer. The song reached number 2 in the German National Charts in May of 2005, garnering a gold record for the artist and Marcy.

Marcy still feels most at home in the freedom of her roots in the blues and soul. In the past few years, she's joined blues greats, Siegel-Schwall, performing at the 2006 annual Chicago Blues Festival and also worked with harmonica master, Corky Siegel, on his amazing project "Chamber Blues", which is an eclectic mix of blues and classical music. She has just completed a 14 song cd of "some very traditional blues". All of the songs are original except for two songs written by Howlin' Wolf, one of Marcy's greatest blues inspirations. Many people have commented that it sounds like an "old Chess record", which is exactly what she was going for. She produced it along with fellow bandmember/harmonicat, Michael Fell. It is now available for purchase. Please check www.marcylevyband.com for further information about this new cd, entitiled, "The Upside of Bein' Down....".