I am thrilled to be able to chat with one of our country's national treasures, "Super Singer" (as hailed by former Tonight Show host Johnny Carson) Marilyn Maye about her upcoming show at 54 Below. 

Entitled “Her Way”, A Salute to Frank Sinatra, Marilyn will once again captivate audiences with her commanding stage presence from April 17-30, 2015 including a very special afternoon performance on Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 2pm, A Saturday Brunch for the Swingin' Bunch.

In this interview Marilyn answered my call to share:

• Why Frank Sinatra is one of her inspirations
• How his career & style shaped her own artistry
• Reflections on her lifelong career, from singing at 7 years old in Topeka, KS to becoming a celebrated performer & teacher
• What she hopes audiences feel & take away from her cabaret show
• Personal insights, unfulfilled dreams, and fun, quirky questions (superpower, signature drink, etc.)
• So much more

Connect with Marilyn: Facebook

1. From April 17-30 you are returning to 54 Below with an all new show entitled “Her Way”, A Salute to Frank Sinatra. What are you looking forward to most about performing this show? It's the Great American Songbook and every song he did was a classic. I believe in that too. All his songs are story songs, vignettes, they're all wonderful stories within themselves and that's the kind of delivery I like to do. Some of the songs are going to be songs they've heard me do before, like the Cole Porter/Johnny Mercer songs, but there are quite a few they haven't heard. Many of his signature songs I wouldn't do until now, now that he's only with us in spirit.

I did this show the year Frank Sinatra passed away in several theatres around the US and it was a two-hour presentation. Now, because there are so many great songs in the show, the challenge is to cut the show down to an hour to do it at the clubs.

2. Out of all the legendary singers out there, what made you want to do a tribute to Frank Sinatra? The main reason, this is the centennial of his birth. As you may know, Adam, the great radio entrepreneur, Dick Robinson, presented me the first “Legend” Award from the Society For The Preservation of The Great American Songbook.

I’m singing the great material Sinatra sang and recorded - - - the standards that will always live on if we, singers, continue to sing them for the genuine music lovers. Many of his songs are right for me to sing now because they talk about the autumn of his years and I'm in the autumn of my years, so they are appropriate for me to do.

Also, I'm not a Sinatra sound-a-like and I don't think there can be anybody that sounds like Sinatra, so I think it's appropriate to do it from my point of view, you see, the show is called "Her Way" (laughs).

Marilyn Maye Performing
54 Below 2013

3. How did his career influence you? There were a great many coincidences between the two of us. He entered many amateur contests when he was little and won them and so did I. He worked with bands. I worked with local big bands when I was in my teens.

There are a lot of similarities between our careers because I too am of that era, he's older than I, but it was my era when I started working and he was prevalent in that time when I was singing in my teens on radio shows.

I'm sure I'll be singing many of those songs at 54 Below that I sang in my teens, like the Johnny Mercer and Cole Porter as I mentioned earlier, but I'll also be singing Gershwin as well.

4. What do you hope audiences come away with after coming to see this show? I always hope they are entertained. I work TO them and not FOR them. I hope they have a wonderful, happy evening. The joy this time is that, on three of the eight nights the show is running, we are celebrating some very special birthdays.

The first birthday we are celebrating is Josh Prince (Broadway choreographer and 2015 Olivier Award Nominee) on April 20th. Josh is celebrating his 40th birthday with 40 of his friends who have worked on such Broadway shows as Beautiful, Wicked,Chicago, Annie, Shrek, The Producers, On The Town, Movin' Out, and The Full Monty to name a few. Josh's fiancé, Michael Novak, a principle dancer with The Paul Taylor Dance Company will be at his side to toast the milestone, along with other members of the company who are also close friends.

Josh's long-time representative, Mark Sendroff, will be raising a glass as will his agent at WME, Michael Finkle. Entertainment lawyer and Broadway producer, Doug Nevin, restaurateur Robert Guarino, and Broadway director, Marc Bruni, will also be in attendance. In Josh's letter to me he said, he has been a big fan of mine for years and can't wait to ring in the next decade with me and 40 of his nearest and dearest.

The next birthday we are celebrating is Dino Cataldi who is bringing 51 people from Philadelphia for my April 23rd show. Dino is a cancer survivor and he is now not only celebrating his 59th Birthday, but also celebrating the fact he’s discovered he’s cancer free.

He purchased 51 tickets because he wanted to bring all the people who stood by him during his medical trial and tribulations. He told me that, mostly, he’s looking forward to seeing the expressions on the faces of those he loves, who have never witnessed the Marvelous Marilyn Maye!

Rebecca Seawright, the first female Assembly Woman representing the Upper East Side, is celebrating her birthday on April 24^th (I performed at her recent inauguration). She is bringing 14 people to 54 Below.

Finally, we are, of course, celebrating my birthday, which I celebrate the whole month of April! So, every night with me will be a party!

Marilyn Maye birthday celebration

5. What do you enjoy most about performing at 54 Below? It's a great room. The sight lines are wonderful. The sound is excellent. It's really a genuine nightclub and very comfortable for me - - - I grew up singing in night clubs.

6. You started singing when you were just 7 years old. What singers inspired you growing up? Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Mel Tormé, Jack Jones, and Jo Stafford.

7. When you think back over your career, what are a few of the highlights you are most proud of? What was the toughest time for you? Oh wow, that's a very tough question. I've lived so long and worked so long, I've worked all my life. It's so hard to say, but the difficult times were more in my personal life, with my husbands, my three alcoholic husbands, yet they were a joy, too.

One of them was a great dancer and we owned a dance studio together for nine years. I worked very hard in that studio. I taught in the vocal department and he taught the dancing. He was a terrific dancer, but an alcoholic.

My third husband was a genius pianist and we worked so beautifully on stage, but off stage it was very, very tough. It was very hard because he was such an alcoholic. He was kind of Jekyll & Hyde. He was a wonderful guy when he was sober, but not so nice when he was drinking. Those were my hard times.

These years are my happiest, especially my last nine years in New York. All the people in New York are really the entertainment lovers and they "get it." This year I worked November at Iridium, January at The Metropolitan Room, February at Birdland. Last week I performed in Palm Springs at a private party honoring my friend, Bob Mackie.

It’s been a busy, wonderful time in my life...all kinds of different shows and the audiences have been so responsive. It's really been a joy.  And now we have eight days at 54 Below. 

I've been getting a lot of Lifetime Achievement Awards - last March, the most recent came from the Manhattan Association of Cabaret and Clubs. In May, the Gem Theater, located in the Jazz District of Kansas City, will be presenting me another Lifetime Achievement Award. I, usually, always tell them, "Wait a minute, I'm not finished yet. There's still a lot more to do”. 

Marilyn Maye performing at Birdland Jazz NYC
Photo Credit: Kevin Alvey

8. This actually leads into my next question. What haven't you done yet that you would like to? I would love to do my symphony concert at Carnegie Hall. That would be a really big moment. Beyond that, my fantasy world would be working with The Muppets. I'd love to have performed a show with them.

I'm very fortunate to be teaching now, doing my Master Classes, and designing shows for other very talented people. That has been a great addition and very rewarding to my life. It's been very rewarding to me.

9. What made you want to start teaching Master Classes? Many people suggested it, but one friend was most insistent, and the more I thought about it, the more I saw that this was a good time in my life to share what I've learned through 80 years of working.

10. What have you learned from your students that you teach in your Master Classes? I've learned singing is the greatest therapy when you have a deep passion for it. Those who have a deep passion and really really work at it are the ones who succeed. It's always very rewarding to me when I see that I’ve made a difference.

Marilyn Maye teaching her Master Class
Photo Credit: Kevin Alvey

11. What's the best advice you've ever received? I worked a great deal in Vegas with the great comedian Shecky Greene. He said to me many years ago, "Marilyn, you try to make your work too perfect. You're too slick. Make a mistake now and then. Show people you're human." And now making a mistake is no problem at all (laughs).

12. What would surprise people about Marilyn Maye? Oh, most people know everything about me. I'm not a closed book or very mysterious. I do have a lot of theories. One is "Flexibility is the key to fun and life." My other motto is "Ever Onward" in all areas. I’m an Aires, I always just forge ahead. My philosophy is “keep moving”.

BONUS QUESTIONS:

13. If you could have any super power, which one would you choose? I would like to have the super power to have only beautiful music always and for people to concentrate on that instead of what's happening in the world.

14. If you could create your own signature drink, what would you call it and what ingredients would you put in it? I’d call it the “Maye-Time Martini. That’s an apple martini with just with a little more Triple Sec in it.

Marilyn Maye backstage in her dressing room

15. When you were growing up and started performing, did you always feel you'd achieve the success you have? What is it like to look back to being a little girl in Topeka, Kansas, to now being helmed as one our country's most legendary performers? Well, I'm not sure I'm being honored that way. I would be thrilled if that were really true. From your mouth, to God's ear. But it's thrilling in New York that I can walk down the street and be recognized. The show biz friends I've made have been so supportive and fill my life with happy times and purpose.

I've really just worked all my life and not focused on stardom. I focused on work and the quality of work. The main thing is to entertain. The audience is the most important. I always tell my students, "The audience is the star. You're not the star. The audience is the star. You work to them and hope they walk out having had a good time."

16. How do you want to be remembered? Lovingly (laughs).

More Marilyn Maye Interviews:

2018 (Watch Here): Giving Thanks at 54 Below

Marilyn Maye

More on Marilyn Maye:

In the years since Marilyn Maye first appeared in the spotlight as a tiny pre-teen vocalist in a series of amateur contests in Topeka, Kansas, she has received an endless stream of kudos. The late Johnny Carson called her "Super Singer." Ella Fitzgerald dubbed her "The greatest white female singer in the world." The Houston Chronicle termed her "A National Treasure." And the prestigious Smithsonian Institution chose her recording of "Too Late Now" (from her RCA Lamp Is Low album) for inclusion in its Best Performers of the Best Compositions of the 20th Century permanent collection, along with such other singing greats as Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.

Add 76 appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, a Grammy nomination in the mid-Sixties as Best New Artist, a bevy of awards reflecting her showmanship, and you have an illustrious singing career that is still going strong after a life-time spent entertaining audiences who are now amazed to discover she still exudes the vocal strength and stamina of a singer half her age. 

A life-long Midwesterner, Marilyn was born April 10, 1928, in Wichita, Kansas, the only child of Kenneth and Lyla McLaughlin. The couple moved to Topeka, Kansas, where her father, a pharmacist, bought a drugstore, when Marilyn was still a toddler. However, by the time she was 12 years old, the twosome had divorced and gone their separate ways. Marilyn remained with her mother who, although she was the antithesis of a stage mother, was never-the-less determined her daughter would have a show business career. "Mother, who was a piano player, decided before I was born that she would have a girl, name her after the musical star Marilyn Miller, and that her daughter would be a singer," Marilyn once recalled, adding with a chuckle, "Lucky for her I actually had talent!"

Convinced her daughter’s path to stardom lie in the then-thriving business of amateur contests, her mother gave Marilyn singing and dancing lessons and then began entering her in every contest held in Topeka and its surrounding environs. The country was in the midst of The Great Depression, and any extra money Marilyn could win was gratefully accepted. Thus, with Lyla at the piano, and 7-year old Marilyn center stage, the twosome worked the boards together for several years, with Marilyn usually winning the top prize.

One of the prizes was a 13-week appearance on The B’rer Fox Show, on WIBW, the number one radio station in Topeka. "I was 11 years old and every Saturday I sang a song and did a specialty number at the Jayhawk Theater," she explained, adding "And at the end of every show I sang ‘God Bless America.’ I think I sang it more than Kate Smith because the show was extended and I sang it for almost two consecutive years!"

Several years after her parents divorced, Marilyn and her mother moved to Des Moines, Iowa, to be close to Lyla’s family. While in high school, Marilyn continued singing, only this time she was appearing regularly on her own radio show, Marilyn Entertains, in which she sang write-in requests from servicemen, as well as from listeners. The show lead to several offers to join nationally-known big bands as their girl singer. But Marilyn chose instead to continue with radio and, after her high school graduation, accepted a job as staff vocalist for WHAS radio in Louisville, Kentucky. "It was an invaluable education," she recalled, "because I performed half the show with a full orchestra. So when I walked onstage 20 years later to do my first RCA recording with a live orchestra I felt at ease and fully prepared."

When her Louisville radio contract ended, Marilyn hit the road, working a variety of large and small nightclubs around the Midwest. "I played a lot of clubs in the Chicago area," she recalled, "and I think I must have played every Moose and Elks Club in the state of Illinois." She laughed.

Although it didn’t seem so at the time, Marilyn’s big break finally arrived in the mid-Fifties when she was booked into The Colony, a supper club in Kansas City, Missouri, for a 3-week gig that turned into an eleven year engagement, a tour of duty she jokingly refers to as "Eleven poverty stricken years." Money aside, they were productive years for Marilyn. She married (twice), had a daughter, Kristi, cut a locally-produced album titled Marilyn the Most, and ultimately was discovered by Steve Allen, who invited her to appear on his television show. It was then that all those years of paying her musical dues and learning her craft began to mesh into the big-time.

After several appearances on The Steve Allen Show, Marilyn was discovered by RCA and signed to a lucrative recording contract which resulted in seven albums and 34 singles, including her hits "Cabaret" and "Step to the Rear," both of which Marilyn recorded prior to the opening of the Broadway shows whence they sprung. "Step to the Rear" was subsequently chosen as the theme song for a Lincoln Mercury commercial that ran for four years with Marilyn appearing throughout the country as the automobile manufacturer’s national radio spokeswoman.

While recording her 1966 RCA album, The Second of Maye, which was recorded Live At The Living Room, Marilyn got her third big break when Ed McMahon caught her act at the then-famous New York nightclub and insisted she had to be on The Tonight Show which was then headquartered in Manhattan. "It was a wonderful break for me," she explained, "because I didn’t have to audition. All I had to do was show up and sing." And sing she did. The studio audience was so enthusiastic that Johnny Carson issued her an open invitation to join him whenever she was in New York or, after the show moved to the West Coast, in Los Angeles. And Skitch Henderson, who was then the NBC Music Director for The Tonight Show, authored the record notes for her Second of Maye album in which he cited "her control, her diction, her warmth and, above all, her timing and straightforward lyrical delivery."

Thus the Sixties, Seventies and early Eighties were hectic, heady and exciting years for the Kansas City-based songstress. Reluctant to leave the Midwest and relocate to either coast, a decision she would later admit was "probably a mistake," Marilyn spent hours winging back and forth from Kansas City to a prestigious array of clubs, appearing in New York at the Copacabana, The Living Room, and The Rainbow Grill. In Chicago, she headlined at both The Drake and The Palmer House hotels. In Hollywood, she played the Century Plaza’s Westside Room and The Hollywood Roosevelt’s Cinegrill; and in Las Vegas she appeared at the Riviera, the MGM Grand and The Sands hotels.

As the nightclub scene gradually disappeared in the Seventies, Marilyn made the transition to Theatre, starring in productions of Can Can, Stephen Sondheim’s Follies and Jerry Herman’s blockbuster musicals, Mame and Hello Dolly. She then recorded the CD Marilyn Maye Sings All of Hello Dolly, which included liner notes by Herman in which he pointed out her "great versatility and vocal range" as well as her "extraordinary combination of singing and acting talent."

Throughout her career, Marilyn has worked with the best talents in the music business, such as the late Peter Matz, who both arranged and conducted her Smithsonian-enshrined album,The Lamp is Low, the esteemed arranger, Don Costa, as well as Manny Albam and Don Sebesky, two other highly-regarded arrangers. She also appeared with Johnny Carson in a number of large venue concerts, sang with the Phoenix Symphony under the baton of Doc Severinsen and, more recently, was the featured singer with both the Philadelphia Pops Orchestra and the Florida Symphony Orchestra at the behest of Peter Nero, who was the pops conductor.

"Marilyn Maye sets the standard for the way any jazz, pop, or big band singer would like to sound," Nero said when introducing Marilyn to the Philadelphia audience. And no one who has ever heard this songbird sing, whether with an orchestra, a trio or just a lone piano, would disagree. She has a command of the stage that can only come from having spent a lifetime of performing live, without the electronically-enhanced recording studio produced gibberish that has become the unfortunate musical standard of the last decade.

Marilyn Maye at The Metropolitan Room 2015
Photo Credit: Kevin Alvey

In 2006, in an ironic twist of fate, Marilyn was once again "discovered" when she appeared as a special guest of The Mabel Mercer Society at New York’s renowned Rose Hall at Lincoln Center. She followed this with, not only a second Mercer concert and a performance at the annual Cabaret Convention at Lincoln Center, but a series of glowingly-reviewed performances at New York’s Metropolitan Room. As a result of this resurgence in popularity, Marilyn has never been busier. In the intervening years she has received a bevy of awards for her performances and has appeared in the nation's top nightclubs from California to New York, always delivering her best to her audiences from whom she more often than not receives a standing ovation and invariably earning high praise from the reviewers.

Thus, as the musical magic of Marilyn Maye marches on, so do the glowing reviews. This was the case when Marilyn appeared for a week of appearances at The Metropolitan Room in October, 2010, and once again wowed The Big Apple's critics with her new show.

Marilyn Maye, Photo Credit: Kevin Alvey

"Exclamations of adoration regularly erupted at Friday’s opening-night performance of Marilyn Maye’s new show, Her Own Kind of Broadway, at the packed Metropolitan Room. Ms. Maye, who personifies a hardy, upbeat show-business trouper, swung Broadway standards in a dark, honeyed voice untouched by the years. Again and again, Ms. Maye embraced show tunes that beat the drums for savoring the moment, wrapping her rich, robust voice around perky, cheerleading lyrics with an earthy conviction that revitalized their feel-good truisms." (Stephen Holden, New York Times, October 12, 2010)

"There’s only one mischievous, miraculous, marvelous Marilyn and its Maye! It’s always about the lyric, the pure conversational approach that inveigles the listeners, welcoming them to enter and partake at her party. She brings a sophistication and resonance to everything she touches that appeals to jazz buffs, hard core Broadway or Cabaret devotees alike." (Sandi Durell, New York Theater Examiner, October 10 2010)

Marilyn Maye Singing, Photo Credit: Kevin Alvey

Of course, having spent most of her life in the glare of the single spotlight, Marilyn takes this all in her stride. "I am the overnight success who’s been working all of my life," she jokingly told a reporter not long ago. "Seriously," she’d added, "I wish all of this had come 20 years ago; but my timing has always been off. When I started recording it was in the Sixties and rock n roll was the big thing. If I’d been recording in the Forties things might have been different…." She hesitated only a moment, then laughed. "Hmm," she said, "if I’d been old enough to record then I might have been dead by now and I’d have missed all of this!"

And so would all of the audiences who, from coast-to-coast and all points in between, have been wowed by Marilyn’s unforgettable performances of today and yesterday. As Will Friedwald summed up in his October 15, 2010, Wall Street Journal review of Marilyn's performance at The Metropolitan Room: "Marilyn Maye is pretty much every singer you ever wanted to hear: She has the rhythm and musicianship of a great jazz singer, the projection and personality of a heavyweight Broadway diva, and creates the intimate bond with her audiences that we demand from a cabaret artist. Her current show at the Metro stresses show tunes and, at more than 90 minutes, still didn’t seem nearly long enough."