At 93, nothing can cease Marilyn Maye
After we first met singer Marilyn Maye again in 2018, she was, exhausting to imagine, on the cusp of 90.
It appeared as if nothing might cease her. However then, COVID occurred … and, effectively, it seems nothing can cease her.
“I am so glad to be out and singing, ya’ know?” she informed correspondent Mo Rocca. “I misplaced a really precious yr for me. I missed my complete 92nd birthday. However who’s counting!”
Rocca was there as Maye turned 93 in April, celebrating – how else? – with a sold-out present at Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre.
However as Billy Stritch, her longtime accompanist, can attest, Maye’s age is inappropriate: “She sings fairly good for 93. She sings fairly good for 23! She sings rings round nearly all people. And he or she’s nonetheless the best to me.”
Stritch, a cabaret headliner in his personal proper, met Maye some 40 years in the past, when he was simply 17. “She’s all the time form of been like my Auntie Mame, in a means,” he mentioned. “There are moments after I’m simply watching her in profile, and I simply have these out-of-body form of moments the place it is like, ‘Jesus, take a look at what she’s doing!'”
What’s she’s been doing for almost eight many years now’s singing … on vinyl, on selection exhibits, and in a Lincoln-Mercury automotive industrial that is nonetheless a crowd favourite.
Marilyn Maye performs on “The Tonight Present Starring Johnny Carson”:
However Maye’s dwelling has all the time been the street. And 2020 was shaping as much as be a BIG yr.
She mentioned, “I used to be booked quite a bit, greater than even normal. I believe they thought the previous woman was gonna kick off any minute, so we higher rent her, ?”
However as COVID unfold, so did the cancellations.
“It was fairly dramatic for me, and traumatic for me,” Maye mentioned.
Traumatic? “Yeah. That is what I do. That is form of my complete being, is to entertain and sing that Nice American Songbook. That is what I used to be placed on this Earth to do. I can not prepare dinner; I simply sing!”
And Maye wasn’t about to let a pesky pandemic cease her. So, she sang wherever she might … on a driveway in her hometown of Kansas Metropolis …
… with no stay viewers on public tv …
… and final summer season, in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
“They all the time smile and applaud quite a bit, and rise up, and cheer, and chuckle quite a bit,” she mentioned. “However this yr, they cried. I did, ‘What the World Wants Now.’ They usually cried, ? Sat on the tables and cried.”
“So, the efficiency took on a complete different which means for them?” requested Rocca.
“Completely. And for me.”
Rocca requested Stritch, “The place do you see Marilyn Maye in 5 years?”
“Nonetheless doing kicks on the finish of ‘It is At this time,'” he mentioned. “If somebody would’ve requested me, , I would not even consider this when she turned 80, will we nonetheless be doing this at 93? And now it is simply handed a degree the place it is like, ‘Nicely, why not go to 100?'”
Rocca requested Maye, “Was there ever a second on this previous yr the place you thought, ‘You realize what? It is a world pandemic. Perhaps I ought to take into consideration retiring’?”
“By no means,” she mentioned. “By no means. You realize that, Mo. By no means.”
“I do know that. I simply thought I ought to ask it!”
“It is not in my vocabulary,” Maye mentioned. “The phrase retirement has by no means been in my vocabulary. Oh, no!”
For more information:
- marilynmaye.com
- billystritch.com
- The Wick Theatre, Boca Raton, Fla.
Story produced by Mary Lou Teel. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
