Maureen Elkner started her professional career in the late
1960s with female vocal trio The Chiffons, with Sue Brady and Judy Condon. They
sang back-up for John Farnham, and toured Vietnam around 1969 with The Gallery,
entertaining the Australian troops stationed there. Also in 1969, Maureen
contributed to a landmark Australian single that is probably the other
recording she is best-known for, alongside former Wild Cherries vocalist Danny
Robinson, Maureen provided backing vocals for the Russell Morris classic
"The Real Thing", and her voice can be heard prominently throughout
the song, especially the wailing high notes in the closing bars of the song,
just before the final explosion. In the early Seventies Maureen branched out
into acting and musical theater. She appeared in Australian production of the
then-notorious musical Oh! Calcutta, which was closed by police halfway through
the second performance and banned. One of her first TV credits was a small role
in the famous soapie “Number 96”. In 1972 and she was a cast member of the
original Australian production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” and in 1974 she
played the featured role of "Columbia" in the original Sydney
production of “The Rocky Horror Show” with Reg Livermore. She appears on the
original Australian cast soundtrack LP's of both these shows. In 1975 she signed
to M7 Records (which was also Bob Hudson's label) and she recorded five singles
for them including "Rak Off Normie” which was the 'answer song' to
"The Newcastle Song", written and performed by folk singer and
broadcaster Bob Hudson. She also wrote many of the tracks that appeared on her
two sought after albums, sang backup for some famous Australian performers and
brought Dusty Springfield's songs back to life for the many fans who still
longed to hear them. This download is the Dusty Springfield tribute album
“Going Back” (SSP-OO1) the album was produced by Russell Grigg. I’m not sure
what year it was released. Fortunately, unlike like many performers who have
been typecast after having a huge novelty hit, she was able to break the mold
by displaying prowess as an actress in major stage productions as well as
prominent TV soaps. Flac
Sunday, 3 April 2016
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2 comments:
Thanks Ozzie; another great find. Maureen Elkner had a Dusty Springfeld revival stage show in 2001. A 15-year-old promo for the show at Wests Leagues is still on the net (http://15min.org/articles/2001/october/17/ootm_1.html). Perhaps this CD was made to accompany those performances.
What a great addition..Maureen is undoubtedly one of our most underrated female singers..well publicly if not professionally at least. But 40+ years after 'Rak Off Normie' & she's still out there playing shows like this Dusty tribute..and others
I don't suppose you have larger & more complete scans for this CD do you? It looks like a terrific album judging by the song titles
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