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Gloria Kaye


Gloria Kaye - Weather / Child - 7

Weather / Child - 7"
RCA Victor - 1968


Michael Panontin
The year 1968 was a banner year for Greg Hambleton, or so said RPM. In its November 11th issue, the music magazine wrote that "Greg Hambleton, singer, composer, engineer, publisher and producer has relocated his Tuesday Music complex to 9 Sultan St, Toronto and can boast 15 releases in 1968 on various labels".

Of course, the fledgling producer was still a few years away from founding Axe Records, where he would score a number of hits for groups like Rain, Gary and Dave, Thundermug and Major Hoople's Boarding House. But one of those fifteen releases was a single written and produced by Hambleton for a little-known twelve-year-old from out west.

Gloria Kaye was allegedly the youngest singer ever signed to RCA Victor in Canada, but her precocity goes much farther back than that. "Gloria always had an amazing voice as a child," her older brother Michael recalled in the Lamont (AB) Leader. "I can remember singing with her when she was three years old and realizing she could sing."

Kaye, whose real surname was Kolmatycki, grew up in Edmonton's Ukrainian community and recorded her first record with Michael at the age of five in 1961. She then issued a version of Nancy Sinatra's #9 hit 'How Does That Grab You, Darlin'?' - in Ukrainian no less - for the Barry label in September '66. Few people today even know those records exist, but they marked the beginning of a relatively fruitful career for Kaye.

'Weather' was recorded at the Sound Canada studio and issued some time in the late fall of '68. With its creamy organ, buoyant horns and of course Kaye's gutsy vocal, it seemed destined to tweak at least a few charts. What it lacked in quality - both Hambleton and Kaye seemed to have been still finding their footing in the industry - it more than made up for in songwriting chops. Why it wasn't picked up and re-recorded south of the border by one of the more established studios is anyone's guess. Hambleton at least saw its potential and gave it to another of his singers, Suzanne Filion, who added a Gallic touch to the song on her self-titled LP the following year.

Kaye issued records throughout the seventies and into the eighties but never really became a household name in Canada...or anywhere else for that matter. Her 1973 rendition of 'Last Tango in Paris' was a sexy amalgam of Cher and 'Theme from Shaft' and is most definitely worth searching out. Kaye actually had a much bigger presence on television, making guest appearances on numerous programs, including The Merv Griffin Show and The Alan Thicke Show. She co-hosted CBC's Sunshine Hour with Tom Gallant and even appeared on a 1979 half-hour special in New Zealand called Kaye and Guest (with NZ singer/actor Rob Guest). She also did plenty of soundtrack work, singing a much-loved duet (with Joe Pizzulo) for Disney World's Carousel of Progress as well as the song 'Cowgirls' for the 1994 Olsen Twins film How the West Was Fun.

But for all that, Kaye inexplicably still does not even have her own Wikipedia page. Go figure.
         
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