Renée Geyer

Renée Rebecca Geyer (11 September 1953 – 17 January 2023) was an Australian singer who was an acclaimed jazz, soul and R&B musician. She released 15 studio albums with Moving Along (1977) and Tenderland (2003) both reaching number 11 on the Australian charts. Geyer's singles success as a solo artist in Australia were with "It's a Man's Man's World", "Heading in the Right Direction" and "Stares and Whispers" in the 1970s and "Say I Love You" in the 1980s. The latter also reached number one in New Zealand. The singer was an internationally respected and sought-after backing vocalist, whose session credits include work with Sting, Chaka Khan, Toni Childs, Joe Cocker, Neil Diamond, Men at Work and Trouble Funk. Geyer's autobiography, Confessions of a Difficult Woman (2000), co-written with music journalist Ed Nimmervoll detailed her drug addictions, sex life and career in music. She described herself as "a white Hungarian Jew from Australia sounding like a 65-year-old black man from Alabama." She spent more than 10 years based in the United States while working as a session vocalist, but had little chart success there under her own name. Geyer returned to Australia in the mid-1990s and her career continued into the 21st century. Rock historian Ian McFarlane described Geyer as having a "rich, soulful, passionate and husky vocal delivery". Her status in the Australian music industry was recognised when she was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame on 14 July 2005. Geyer and fellow 1970s singer Marcia Hines are the subjects of Australian academic Jon Stratton's 2008 cultural studies article A Jew Singing Like a Black Woman In Australia. Geyer died of lung cancer which was attributed to her long addiction to smoking cigarettes. Renée Rebecca Geyer, was born on 11 September 1953 in Melbourne, to a Hungarian-Jewish father, Edward Geyer (1920–2013), and a Slovak-Jewish mother, Gabriella (1926–2017), a Holocaust survivor, as the youngest of three children. The couple had met in Palestine and migrated to Melbourne in 1951 where her father managed the Warsaw Centre. Geyer was named Renée after another Holocaust survivor who had helped her mother in Auschwitz after Josef Mengele had assigned the rest of her mother's family to death. In 1955 the Geyers moved to Sydney where her parents were managers of Komlos Hostel, Greenwich until 1963—thereafter they started their own Geyer Kosher catering service. Both elder siblings were academically gifted, but Geyer described herself as a problem child, while her parents called her übermutig (German for "reckless"). She attended various schools and was expelled from a private school, Methodist Ladies College, for petty stealing. Her first job was as a receptionist for the Australian Law Society. In 1970, at the age of 16, while still at Sydney Girls High School or at Dover Heights Girls' High, Geyer began her singing career as a vocalist with jazz-blues band Dry Red. The group worked at Kask Wine Bar, Bondi; where she earned $5 a night her father disapproved of her chosen career, "[he] said if I was going to do that, I was not going to live at home. So to make peace I moved out. I left home—and school... I got a job singing in a bar straight away, and my mum made sure I did not go hungry." Dry Red also contained Eric McCusker (later of Mondo Rock). For her audition she sang the Bee Gees' hit "To Love Somebody". She left Dry Red for other bands and in 1971 joined the more accomplished jazz-rock group Sun. With Geyer, Sun's line-up was George Almanza (piano), Henry Correy (bass guitar), Gary Norwell (drums), Keith Shadwick (saxophone, flute, clarinet, vocals) and Chris Sonnenberg (guitar). The group released one studio album with Geyer, Sun 1972 in August 1972 but she departed before it appeared and was replaced by Starlee Ford on lead vocals. In 2022 a four-disc album by various Sun line-ups, Rehearsal Recordings Album, was issued. John Shand of The Sydney Morning Herald observed, "[on Geyer's tracks] you hear the tug of war between her R&B comfort zone and the freer, jazzier, moodier pieces... [including] diving to the depths of her range, and singing with such bruising power as summons a sudden blazing guitar solo." Late in 1972 Geyer joined Mother Earth whose R&B, soul music style was more in keeping with Geyer's idiom. Mother Earth consisted of Geyer, Jim Kelly (guitar), David Lindsay (bass guitar), John Proud (drums) and Mark Punch (guitar, vocals). Lindsay, Proud and Punch had all been members of Nine Stage Horizon, while Kelly was from Levi Smith's Clefs. By the start of the following year Harry Brus had replaced Lindsay on bass guitar and Russell Dunlop replaced Proud on drums. Although the group performed on ABC-TV's popular music show GTK they did not record any material under their own name. In 1973 Geyer was signed to RCA Records, which had released Sun's album the year before. Already showing signs of her self-proclaimed "Difficult Woman" tag, Geyer loyally insisted that her Mother Earth bandmates back her on her solo recordings and used Brus on bass guitar, Dunlop on drums, Kelly on electric and acoustic guitars and Punch on electric and acoustic guitars; as well as Almanza on piano and Bobby Gebbert on piano. Her self-titled debut studio album was released in September 1973 which mostly consisted of R&B/Soul cover versions of overseas hits and was produced by Gus McNeil at ATA Studios, Sydney. The Australian Jewish Times' writer praised her "superb vocal talents" and recognised her as an "exciting and talented new star." Geyer left Mother Earth by the end of the year. Geyer's second studio album, It's a Man's Man's World (August 1974), was produced by Tweed Harris (ex-the Groove). Aside from Harris on keyboards it was recorded with Mike Brady on backing vocals, Bobby Bright on backing vocals, Geoff Cox on drums, Tim Gaze on guitar and Phil Manning on guitar. It became her first charting album when it peaked at No. 28 in October on the Kent Music Report. The title track, "It's a Man's Man's World" (November), is a cover version of James Brown's 1965 hit and became her first top 50 single at No. 44. By December 1974 Geyer had joined with jazz-funk group Sanctuary to tour her second album. Sanctuary's original line-up was Billy Green on guitar (ex-Doug Parkinson in Focus) together with ex-Chain members Barry Harvey on drums, Mal Logan on keyboards and Barry Sullivan on bass guitar. Geyer was disenchanted with RCA's refusal to allow her to record more original material, she was prepared to wait out her contract. However, former Chain members convinced Geyer to contact their label, Mushroom Records' boss Michael Gudinski and talent manager Ray Evans to strike a deal so they would record her and RCA would release her material with a Mushroom logo. This arrangement led to Geyer's third studio album, Ready to Deal, which was recorded in August–September 1975, with Sanctuary renamed Renée Geyer Band with the line-up Logan, Sullivan, Mark Punch on guitar (ex-Mother Earth) and Greg Tell on drums. They co-wrote most of the material for the album; the album was released in November to reach No. 21. It provided one of Geyer's signature songs "Heading in the Right Direction", written by Punch and Garry Paige (both ex-the Johnny Rocco Band), which reached the top 40 in 1976. Geyer reflected on the local music scene, "The sort of music I like and the band is into is not very popular yet in Australia." She expected to "go overseas to make a name, and money." Geyer participated in the 1975 federal election campaign for the Liberal Party, singing their theme song "Turn on the Lights". In later years she distanced herself from the Liberals and politics in general, stating she had done their theme song to earn enough money to record an album in the United States, where she had signed a contract with Polydor Records. Before departing Mick Rogers on guitar (ex-Manfred Mann's Earth Band) replaced Punch and Renée Geyer Band recorded a