Marcia Barrett

Marcia Barrett (born 14 October 1948) is a British singer and one of the original singers with the vocal group Boney M.

Barrett was born in Saint Catherine Parish, British Jamaica. Her family later emigrated to Croydon, England. In the late 1960s she moved to Germany, where she joined a band and toured with Karel Gott and Rex Gildo. In 1971 she signed to Metronome Records and made her first record, "Could Be Love", written by Joe Menke and Frank Valdor. At the same time, she kept touring, with such songs as "Son of a Preacher Man", "Oh Happy Day" and "Big Spender".

In 1975, she joined Boney M., a group of models and dancers, to make discothèque and television performances of "Baby Do You Wanna Bump", a song recorded by record producer Frank Farian. The single was sold in the Benelux countries. When singer Claudja Barry left in early 1976, Barrett suggested a fellow Jamaican, Liz Mitchell, as replacement. Mitchell was a singer, and Farian engaged her and Barrett to make a follow-up recording, "Daddy Cool". They recorded Boney M.'s first album, Take the Heat Off Me, in 1976. After an appearance on the German television programme Musikladen in September, the group was in the charts all over Europe, and a series of hit singles and albums followed over the next decade. Boney M. counted four official members, but only Barrett and Mitchell were in the recording studio when Boney M.'s records were recorded. Frank Farian (and, from 1982–85, Reggie Tsiboe) provided male vocals that dancer and live on tour singer Bobby Farrell mimed on TV.

While Mitchell was the lead singer, Barrett contributed harmony on many the group's songs and shared the lead with Mitchell on the hits "Daddy Cool", "Ma Baker", "Rasputin" and "Gotta Go Home". She also led on a couple of tracks on each of the group's studio albums up to Christmas Album (1981), including the title of the first album Take the Heat off Me and "Lovin' or Leavin'". These were released as a Barrett solo single in 1977. She sang lead vocals on "Belfast", a song she had performed live in her solo years, which became the second single from the second album Love for Sale; it was a German no. 1 and a European Top 10 hit. On that album, she also performed "Silent Lover".

On Nightflight to Venus, Barrett sang "Nightflight To Venus" and a cover of "King of the Road" as well as the original "Never Change Lovers in the Middle of the Night", which became a standard during the group's performances. She sang the a capella intros of Boney M.'s 1978 Christmas hit, "Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord", and "Ribbons of Blue", was lead singer of "No Time to Lose" on the group's 1979 album Oceans of Fantasy and had a solo on the opening track "Let It All Be Music".

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.