She is a singer-songwriter born in St. Paul, Minnesota who began her life in music from a very young age. She began taking studies in the piano when she was six years old and by the time she was a teenager she was singing with various local bands.
She took her further studies at the University of Minnesota and once she had finished her education there she ventured out in her musical career by touring the United States with several different groups and artists.
She gained the interest of the Peter, Paul & Mary singer Peter Yarrow and was invited to sing as his backing vocalist on a solo tour. This, in turn, resulted in her working with him in the recording studio.
It wasn’t long before she was given her own contract by Ariola America and in 1976 she released her debut album and single both called “Torn Between Two Lovers”. As 1977 rolled in she found herself having a hit record on both sides of the Atlantic with No. 1 singles on the Adult Contemporary and Pop Charts and also crossing over to the Billboard country chart where the song reached No. 3. This success did not continue after that, however, and the later two singles from the album which were released received much less interest. Mary later told the author Fred Bronson who wrote The Billboard Book of Number Ones that she didn’t like her hit song and due to her being away from home so much on the back of its success, the strain on their marriage caused them to separate.
As time went on she released further albums and achieved minor chart success with three of the singles she released. Her other albums were 1979’s In Your Eyes and 1980s Mary MacGregor. The single, “Good Friend” was used on the soundtrack of the 1979 movie Meatballs.
In the 1980s she gained further attention when, at the beginning of the decade, she was a winner at the World Popular Song Festival when her co-written “What’s the Use” won awards for Best Performance and Best Song. The following year, in 1981, she put her song writing to good use once again when she wrote “Love Light” and “Sayonara” which were included in the Japanese anime movie Adieu Galaxy Express 999.
In the middle of the 1980s she formed the trio Mary & The Blue Jays along with the guitarist Jim Kennedy and the bassist James Royce. They toured in California performing at many of the nightclubs on the Central Coast.
Everything went quiet with her during the 1990s until 1999 when she got together with the musicians John Holt and Joe Ghiglia and formed The Mary MacGregor Band. The group found her back in the recording studio and releasing Perfect Yellow House.
Sources:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_MacGregor
- http://www.myspace.com/marymacgregor
- http://www.superseventies.com/1977_7singles.html
- http://www.answers.com/topic/mary-macgregor
- http://www.allmusic.com/artist/mary-macgregor-p25283
- http://www.allmusic.com/artist/mary-macgregor-p25283/credits