 Renee Geyer
Long recognised as Australia's foremost jazz, blues
and soul singer, Renee Geyer (born 1952) has issued 14 albums over the
course of a 25-year career. Best known for her rich, soulful,
passionate and husky vocal delivery, Geyer has also been much in
demand as a session singer. She has sung backing vocals on numerous
album sessions ranging from La De Das, Dragon and Men At Work to
Richard Clapton and Jimmy Barnes.
Geyer has worked and recorded in the USA as well as
singing back-up vocals for international artists such as Joe Cocker,
Sting and Chaka Khan. Her earliest bands included Sydney-based blues
outfits Dry Red, Silversun and Sun. In 1972, she sang with two short
lived bands, Free Spirit and Nine Stage Horizon before joining a
jazz-blues band called Mother Earth, who backed Renee on her
self-titled debut album and the singles Space Captain and
Oh! Boy. She split from Mother Earth at the end of that year.
Her second album, It's A Man's Man's World,
yielded the singles What Do I Do On Sunday Morning?, It's
Been A Long Time and a cover of James Brown's It's A Man's
Man's World. Geyer's gorgeous rendering of this song became her
first charting single when it reached Number 29 in Melbourne during
December 1974. By that time she had teamed up with jazz/funk band
Sanctuary. When they came to record her Ready To Deal album,
Sanctuary became known as the Renee Geyer Band.
Ready To Deal was a success and spawned three
singles; (I Give You) Sweet Love, Heading In The Right
Direction and If Loving You Is Wrong. During that period,
the Renee Geyer Band supported overseas visitors like Eric
Clapton. The band recorded the live album Really . . . Really Love
You with Renee in 1976 before she travelled to the USA to record
Moving Along in Los Angeles with Motown producer Frank Wilson
and a host of American session players, including members of Stevie
Wonder's band. Stares and Whispers and Tender Hooks were
issued as singles. Renee's final single for 1977 was the theme song to
the television soapie The Restless Years.
Geyer spent the next decade dividing her time between
Australia and the US. She recorded Winner in LA. Money
(That's What I Want) and Baby Be Mine were issued as
singles. The excellent Blues License album and the BB King song
The Thrill Is Gone were released in July 1979.
In 1980, Renee signed to Mushroom Records. She
recorded with rock band The Ideals, which resulted in the hard-edged
Hot Minutes single in July 1980. Her biggest hits came with the
salsa/reggae styled Say I Love You single in July 1981 and the
So Lucky album (November 1981). The album produced two other
singles, Do You Know What I Mean? and I Can Feel The Fire.
Geyer went on to release three further singles on Mushroom; Love So
Sweet, Goin' Back and Trouble In Paradise. Her last
albums for Mushroom were Renee Live and the 'Best Of' set
called Faves.
In 1984 she recorded a duet with Jon English called
Every Beat Of My Heart and in 1985 her first album for WEA,
Sing To Me, contained the singles Faithful Love, Every
Day Of The Week and All My Love. Live At The Basement
was her last solo album for eight years, during which time she lived
in L.A. and joined Californian band Easy Pieces, appearing on the A&M
album Easy Pieces in 1988.
TRIVIA NOTE
Renee contributed backing vocals to Sting's second solo album,
Nothing Like The Sun. She was incorrectly listed in the credits as
René Gayer.
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