Taffy nivert biography sample
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It’s Wednesday and I’d like to welcome you to another installment of my midweek feature that is taking a closer look at a song I’ve only mentioned in passing or haven’t covered at all to date. My pick for today is Boulder to Birmingham by Emmylou Harris.
While I had known of the country and Americana-focused singer-songwriter for decades, it wasn’t until July 2017 that Harris really entered my radar screen. That month, I saw her live in Philadelphia, sharing the bill with John Mellencamp and Carlene Carter, and was truly impressed by her performance.
Boulder to Birmingham was co-written by Harris and Bill Danoff, a singer and songwriter who penned John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads, among other hits. Inspired by Harris’ grief over the death of her friend and mentor Gram Parsons, it’s the only original track she recorded for her second studio album Pieces of the Sky, released in February 1975.
Harr
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Taffy Nivert
American singer-songwriter
Taffy Nivert | |
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Nivert as she appeared in a Starland Vocal Band promotional photo dated June 1977 | |
| Birth name | Mary Catherine Nivert |
| Born | (1944-10-25) October 25, 1944 (age 80) Washington, D.C.,[1] U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Songwriter, singer |
Musical artist
Mary Catherine "Taffy" Nivert[2] (born October 25, 1944) is an American songwriter and singer. She is best known for co-writing "Take Me Home, Country Roads", which was popularized by John Denver, and for being a member of the Starland Vocal Band.
Biography
[edit]Mary Catherine Nivert was born 25 October 1944 in Washington, D.C. She received her nickname Taffy from her elder brother who, unable to pronounce her middle name as a young child, would call her Mary Tafferine.[3] Nivert began singing along with the radio in high school. She was discovered by a bartender in Georgetown after he heard her singing to a jukebox. The bartend
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In the summer of 1976, Eddie Pelto began hearing “Afternoon Delight” on AM radio several times a day, for months. He was sju years old, lived in northern Massachusetts, and loved the Starland Vocal Band’s skyrocket-y hit. “It was one of my favorite songs as a child,” Pelto, now a non-profit executive, told me. “I thought it was about dessert.”
As inom learned when I began asking people about the song, he was not the only youngster to misunderstand the lyrics. “I thought it was about some sort of prat treat,” one person said. Another added, “I vaguely believed ‘Afternoon Delight’ to be a product in competition with Sunny Delight.”
Children weren’t the only ones fooled. Suzanne Ciani, the avant-garde synthesizer pioneer who, in an improbable twist, played on “Afternoon Delight,” said the four members of Starland Vocal grupp “looked very clean cut and young.” She was nearly thirty at the time, but said via email, “I had no idea the song was about an afternoon romantic encounter.”
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