Norman Greenbaum
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Norman Greenbaum (born November 20, 1942 in Malden , Massachusetts ) is an American singer and songwriter . He became known for his worldwide hit Spirit in the Sky . In Great Britain , Germany and Australia the song reached the top position of the single hit parades. In the US Billboard charts it came to number 3. Greenbaum is a typical one-hit wonder .
Life
Origin and early years
Greenbaum's maternal grandparents immigrated from Russia to Massachusetts in the early 1900s . His paternal grandparents emigrated from Poland . His father was born during a stopover in England in 1906 . Greenbaum grew up with his older sister in a Jewish Orthodox home. He also attended a Hebrew school a few days a week after leaving school at the public school. In 1960 his father died.
Greenbaum was enthusiastic about the music of Elvis Presley . In his view, many white singers copied black music . He was intrigued by what he called Southern Country Blues, especially the lyrics. He and a friend bought guitars, taught themselves a few chords , and tried to write songs themselves. After his friend got tired of playing, Greenbaum discovered his passion and ability to write lyrics. When he went to junior high school , he knew he wanted to be a musician.
Musical career
First Greenbaum studied geography at Boston University . That one year he went to the local coffee houses to sing and play guitar in front of an audience. In 1965 he moved from Boston to Los Angeles . There he teamed up with three friends and founded the group “Dr. West's Medicine Show & Junk Band ”. She appeared with painted faces and confused choreographed light effects and offered a mixture of Dixieland jazz , melancholy Mississippi Delta folklore and Caribbean rhythms. The band was once the opening act for Sonny & Cher . The quartet succeeded in 1967 with the song The Eggplant That Ate Chicago (Engl. For the eggplant, the Chicago ate ) a hit. After the success subsided, the musicians separated.
Greenbaum now focused on a solo career . In 1968 he met the then successful music producer Erik Jacobsen, who signed him. Two singles from his 1969 album Spirit in the Sky flopped . And the third single, which had the same name as the album, didn't do any better either. The record company Reprise Records was about to give up the album when an independent record dealer managed to get a radio station to play the song at eleven in the evening. After the record retailer told the program director that he bought 15,000 copies of the single and got him to play the song for another week, it was No. 1 in Los Angeles two weeks later. In the first half of 1970 the song reached top positions internationally and sold around two million times. The record company asked Greenbaum to write a follow-up hit quickly. But he did not succeed, more of his songs flopped, whereupon the record company dropped him.
The time after the music
By the late 1970s, Greenbaum had completely broken away from playing music. He has worked in a number of Northern California restaurants as a cook, butcher, and kitchen manager. In 1987, however, a Hollywood film company contacted him to use his song Spirit in the Sky as the soundtrack for the film Maid to Order . This was followed by other movies such as 1995 Apollo 13 or 1997 Contact , which also used the song. There were also advertising films. For every feature film that featured the song as a soundtrack, Greenbaum received $ 10,000 or more. In this way, he no longer had to work, but could live in his own two-room apartment from the royalties. Today Greenbaum lives in Santa Rosa , about an hour's drive north of San Francisco .
Discography
Albums
- 1968: Norman Greenbaum with Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band (with Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band)
- 1969: Spirit in the Sky
- 1970: Back Home Again
- 1972: Petaluma
Compilations
- 1995: Spirit in the Sky: The Best of Norman Greenbaum
- 1996: Spirit in the Sky + Back Home Again
- 1997: Spirit in the Sky: The Best of Norman Greenbaum
- 2003: Spirit in the Sky: The Definitive Anthology
- 2009: Spirit in the Sky: The Best of Norman Greenbaum
Singles
- 1968: School for Sweet Talk (as Dr. Norman Greenbaum)
- 1969: Marcy
- 1969: Jubilee
- 1969: Spirit in the Sky
- 1970: Gondoliers, Shakespeares, Overseers, Playboys and Bums (with Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band)
- 1970: Canned Ham
- 1970: IJ Foxx
- 1971: California Earthquake
- 1971: Twentieth Century Fox (with Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band)
- 1972: Dairy Queen
- 1974: Nancy Whiskey (with Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band)
- 1989: Spirit in the Sky
swell
- ↑ a b Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
- ↑ Music Sales Awards: US
- ↑ Scott R. Benarde: Stars of David: Rock'n'Roll Jewish Stories , 2003, p 186/187, ISBN 1-58465-303-5
- ↑ Biography of Norman Greenbaum in musicline.de ( Memento of the original from January 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from Rock-Lexikon Volume 1 + 2 , edited by Siegfried Schmidt-Joos and Wolf Kampmann
- ↑ Scott R. Benarde: Stars of David: Rock'n'Roll Jewish Stories , 2003, p 188, ISBN 1-58465-303-5
- ↑ The New York Times , Article A 'Spirit' From the '60s That Won't Die, December 24, 2006
Web links
- Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky website
- Norman Greenbaum in the Internet Movie Database (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Greenbaum, Norman |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American singer and songwriter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 20, 1942 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Malden , Massachusetts , USA |