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GALE GARNETT

“WE’LL SING IN THE SUNSHINE”

(GALE GARNETT)

RCA 8388

No. 4     October 17,1964

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Gale was born on July 17, 1942, in Auckland, New Zealand.   Dad was a carnival pitchman and a music-hall

entertainer;  consequently, the family moved around a lot.   They    landed in the U.S. when Gale was nine,

moved about some more, and eventually settled in New York City.   Dad encouraged her to find her place in

the sun.   By age 12, Gale was on stage, acting.   When her father died, Gale left home to set her own place on

the Lower East Side.   In between bit parts, Garnett worked as a waitress and janitor.   In her late teens, she

got a role in a touring company of  The Drunkard.  Over the next few years, she made 60 acting appearances

on TV episodes of  “Bonanza,”  “Hawaiian Eye,” and “77  Sunset Strip.” She also acted in stage productions

of Guys and Dolls, Threepenny Opera, and Show Boat.

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In her meager spare time,  the exhausted youth wrote poetry and folk songs.   Only three months before

Gale walked into RCA Records with a pile of her compositions, she had made her singing debut in a Los

Angeles coffee-house.   Label execs found her gravel-throated voice and material to be unique, and gave the

go-ahead  to record an album’s worth of folkie things.   “We’ll Sing In the Sunshine” was  the first single

issued, and it was a winner.    Garnett’s feminist decree of eternal personal independence won a Grammy

Award as “Best Folk Recording of the Year.”   But other than the immediate follow-up, “Lovin’ Place” (#54,

1965), no other Garnett platters sold well.

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It is not known what became of Gale Garnett.  When her sun last shone, it was late in the ’60s.   Gale was

backed  by the Gentle Reign, an electric wall of hair, beads, and 12-string guitars.   Two odd albums of  acid-

laced hippie happenings were unleashed by Columbia Records.   Gale was definitely “far out” by this time;

though the sounds were a happening.