Linda November

Linda Ellen November (born October 16, 1944) Engelbert Humperdinck, and Neil Diamond. She started her career in music as a concert pianist, playing piano from the age of five. However, she lost interest in the piano as a teenager and turned to singing instead, helped by the fact that she learned she had perfect pitch. Then Schirmer got her a job singing at an industrial musical for Ford Motor Company, where she met many other successful musicians, singers, and composers such as Ray Charles. He began incorporating her into sessions with the Ray Charles Singers, a group of performers with a rotating membership that would sing in close harmonies, often on productions with singer and television personality Perry Como, or as backup singers for other recordings. Her most notable commercial was in an ad campaign for Meow Mix, where she was the voice ("Meow meow meow meow...") of a singing cat. The idea came from Ron Travisano at the advertising agency of Della Femina Travisano and Partners, who had the account with Ralston Purina in 1976. Travisano put together film footage with editor Jay Gold, looping images of a cat to make it look like it was singing. Working from the film, Tom McFaul of the jingle house Lucas/McFaul composed music to fit, and Linda November sang the meowing melody. The campaign was a major success, spawned 81 other different commercials, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in residuals.

Other projects (1970s–present)

In the 1970s, along with providing her voice for commercials, November also recorded pop songs on the radio. She, Tony Orlando, and Toni Wine sang "Candida", in a group surreptitiously entitled "Dawn". Tony Orlando was a recording industry executive at the time, for a competing label, April-Blackwood. So to avoid a conflict, the group was entitled "Dawn" without Orlando's name. However, the song became a major hit, along with its followup "Knock Three Times" (also featuring backup by November and Toni Wine). To go on tour, Orlando then asked two other session singers, Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson, to become the official backup singers, in their own "Dawn" group, so they could tour as Tony Orlando and Dawn, though the voices on the songs of the original album were still of November and Toni Wine, not Hopkins and Vincent. A few years later, November was again on the charts as part of the group Wing and a Prayer Fife and Drum Corps, an assemblage of studio musicians put together by Harold Wheeler. They released two albums, with their biggest hit being a disco version of the 1926 song "Baby Face". It reached #14 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in late 1976, and #12 in the UK.

In the 1980s and 1990s, November could often be found singing in Atlantic City, such as at Gatsby's at The Grand, and then starting in 1990, at the Harrah's Atrium Lounge, with Artie Schroeck. They had met in the 1960s while working on Frankie Valli recordings, but had both been married to other people at the time. In 1988 they became a couple, and on January 17, 1997, they married.

In 2001, November and her husband moved to Las Vegas. As of 2011, she continues to work there as a piano and keyboard accompanist, performing the occasional show with Schroeck.

Awards 1972, "Most Valuable Studio Player", NARAS, New York Chapter 1974, Taystee Bread (Best Radio, Clio Award, 1974) 1978, United States Army (Best Television/Cinema, Clio Award, 1978) the main theme "I'm Comin' Home" in the 1973 film The Devil in Miss Jones, and the "Galaxy Glue" jingle in the 1981 film The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

Jingles Drinks Coca-Cola, 1979, "Coke and a smile" (see also Mean Joe Greene ad) Coca-Cola, "I’d like to teach the world to sing" Prudential Financial, "Get a piece of the rock" 1969, with B. J. Thomas, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" 1970, with Tony Orlando, ("Candida", "Knock Three Times") 1975, with Jimi Hendrix (posthumously) (Crash Landing) 1976, with Gloria Gaynor, ("I've Got You Under My Skin"), on the I've Got You album (arranged by Meco Monardo) 1976, with Engelbert Humperdinck ("After the Lovin'") 1976, as part of the Wing and a Prayer Fife and Drum Corps, "Baby Face"