Helen Reddy

Artist Biography by Marcy Donelson

A singer admired for her warm, crystalline vocal tone

and smooth light-pop songs, Australia's Helen Reddy is best remembered for the
chart-topping feminist anthem "I Am Woman" (1972). She reached the Top 40 over
a dozen more times through the late '70s, including with the U.S. number ones
"Delta Dawn" (1973) and "Angie Baby" (1974). During the peak of her career, she
had a pair of Top Ten albums (1973's Long Hard Climb and the next year's Free
and Easy) and briefly hosted her own summer variety series, The Helen Reddy
Show, on NBC. Acting opportunities, including a starring role in the Disney musical
film Pete's Dragon (1977), soon followed. Though she last reached the Hot 100 in
1981, Reddy found work on the stage, including a 1995 Broadway debut in the
musical Blood Brothers. Meanwhile, she continued to release periodic recordings
through 2000's The Best Christmas Ever, her 17th and final studio album. A movie
about her life, I Am Woman, saw release in 2019, a year before Reddy's death.

Born Helen Maxine Reddy on October 25, 1941 in Melbourne, Reddy came from

a dedicated show business family. Her father, Max Reddy, was a writer, actor, and
producer, and her mother, Stella Lamond (aka Stella Campbell) was a regular on
Australian television series such as Homicide and Bellbird in the '60s and '70s. Her
older half-sister, Toni Lamond, was a performer from childhood, having been
raised on the vaudeville circuit. Helen was born while her father was deployed as
part of an Army entertainment unit that also included actor Peter Finch. When the
Second World War ended, four-year-old Helen joined her parents on the vaudeville
stage as a singer and dancer. At the age of 12, Reddy opted to live with her aunt,
partly as a rebellion against her parents' lifestyle. After finishing school, a short-
lived marriage to an older musician left her a single mother in her mid-twenties,
and she turned to singing to support the household. Reddy quickly earned spots
performing on radio and television, and in 1966, she took the top prize in a talent
competition on TV's Bandstand, winning a trip to New York City and the chance to
audition for Mercury Records. Though the trip was unsuccessful, she decided to
stay in the States with her daughter.
For the next couple years, Reddy frequently traveled to Canada (a fellow
Commonwealth country) for singing gigs, as the lack of a U.S. work permit proved
a major obstacle. In 1968, an acquaintance in New York threw Reddy a party,
charging admission to help her raise rent. It was there that she met Jeff Wald,
whom she married just a few days later. Wald, who had been a working as a
secretary at William Morris Agency, soon lost his job, and the couple moved to
Chicago, where Reddy, now a U.S. citizen, found steady work as a lounge singer.
Before 1968 was over, she signed with Fontana Records, a division of Mercury.
Her debut single, "One Way Ticket," reached number 83 in Australia.

In 1969, Wald moved the family to Los Angeles and found work managing acts
including Deep Purple and Tiny Tim. He eventually got Reddy the shot to record
a 7" as a trial for Capitol Records. She decided on Mac Davis' "I Believe in Music"
backed with "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from the musical Jesus Christ
Superstar. The Andrew Lloyd Webber tune proved to be her breakthrough hit,
reaching number 13 on the Hot 100 as well as the Top Ten in Canada and
Australia in 1971. The album I Don't Know How to Love Him arrived on Capitol
that May, peaking at number 100 in the U.S. She followed it six months later
with Helen Reddy.

In 1972, Reddy hit number one with "I Am Woman," the title track to her third
album. Co-penned by Australian musician Ray Burton (the Delltones, the
Executives) and Reddy, who wrote the inspirational lyrics ("I am woman, hear me
roar/In numbers too big to ignore"), the song became an anthem for female
empowerment in the counterculture era. It won Reddy the Grammy Award for Best
Pop Vocal Performance, Female in 1973, the year that also saw the Roe vs. Wade
Supreme Court decision. Reddy was soon in demand on variety shows and late-
night TV, earning her own summer replacement series in 1973 with NBC's The
Helen Reddy Show. In the meantime, the I Am Woman LP reached number 14 on
the Billboard 200 and the Top Ten in Canada and Australia. She hit number one in
all three countries with "Delta Dawn" from the 1973 follow-up Long Hard Climb.
That album went as high as number eight in the States. The year 1974 brought two
more hit albums, Love Song for Jeffrey and Free and Easy, the latter of which
tied a career-high number eight on the Billboard 200. Free and Easy included her
third U.S. number one single in as many years, "Angie Baby." That same year, she
portrayed a guitar-playing nun in the action film Airport 1975 and reached the
number nine spot on the Hot 100 with the Paul Williams-penned "You and Me
Against the World," which featured her daughter, Traci. (By then, the family had
grown to include a son, Jordan.) As Reddy became a pop culture fixture with
multiple slots on TV series like The Carol Burnett Show and The Tonight Show
Starring Johnny Carson (including as guest host), she returned to the U.S. Top Ten
with "Ain't No Way to Treat a Lady" from 1975's No Way to Treat a Lady. Early
the following year, Helen Reddy's Greatest Hits reached the Top Five in the U.S.,
U.K., and New Zealand. As Reddy's brand of adult-contemporary pop began to fall
out of fashion, she made her final appearances in the Billboard 200 with
1976's Music, Music, which reached number 16, and 1977's Ear Candy, which
topped out at number 75. In 1977, she could be seen in Disney's animated live-
action hybrid musical Pete's Dragon alongside Hollywood legends like Mickey
Rooney and Shelly Winters. The following year included an appearance in the
musical comedy film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and she was the
celebrity guest on an episode of The Muppet Show. As her commercial success
wound down in the late '70s, albums like 1978's We'll Sing in the Sunshine, Live
in London, and the next year's Reddy failed to chart in the U.S. or Australia
(Reddy reached number 97 in Canada). Released in May of 1980, Take What
You Find turned out to be her final album for Capitol.

Still a household name, Reddy signed with MCA and

released Play Me Out in 1981. The label followed it with Imagination in 1983.
That year, Reddy and Wald divorced, and Reddy married drummer Milton Ruth.
Parting ways with MCA, she took to the stage, performing in regional theater on the
West Coast, including productions of the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes
and Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam. Reddy also appeared in episodes of prime-
time TV's The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Eventually, she returned to music
with the self-released studio album Feel So Young, a mix of re-recorded hits and
original material, in 1990. Reddy made her Broadway debut in January 1995,
replacing Carole King as Mrs. Johnstone in Willy Russell's Blood Brothers, a role
she reprised on the West End. Following her third divorce, she toured the U.S. as
Shirley in Shirley Valentine in 1997 and released the show tunes set Center
Stage on Varèse Sarabande in 1998. What would be Reddy's last album, The
Best Christmas Ever, followed in 2000.

After retiring from recording, Reddy went back to school and became a practicing

therapist and motivational speaker. She still turned up occasionally on television,
including on episodes of Diagnosis: Murder and Family Guy as late as 2011. She
gave a concert in Los Angeles in 2016, and a film based on her life starring Tilda
Cobham-Hervey as Reddy, I Am Woman, premiered at the Toronto International
Film Festival in 2019. Helen Reddy died in Los Angeles on September 29, 2020.
She was 78 years old.