Marcella Detroit Biography

The last 18 months have been a successful time for this prolific songwriter. Marcella has had hit records in the UK, Germany and Brazil with songs covered by artists such as Charlotte Church, Joana Zimmer and latin boy band KLB. Joana Zimmer's cover of Marcella's 'I Believe (Give a Little)' was one of the most played songs on German radio last year. It spent months in the chart peaking at No.2.

Marcella has also recently written with ex Spice girl Emma Bunton, Hayley Westenra , Alesha ( ex- Misteeq) and fame academy winner Alex Parkes. Somehow Marcy has also found the time to collaborate with legendary blues guitarist Carlos Guitarlos as well as recording her own solo blues project.

Marcy Levy was born and bred in Detroit, Michigan. She took up the violin at age 8 (as did her great grandfather who, she recently discovered, was a concert violinist), then ukulele, and guitar by age 11. Not only did she see some of the greats but later went on to actually sing with many of her idols including Aretha and Stevie!

"Detroit had a huge influence on me: Stevie Wonder , Aretha Franklin. I used to sneak into venues and see bands like Janis Joplin, Cream, Black Sabbath, MC5, Iggy Pop".

Marcella was at school with the likes of Don Was, "very much into folky blues" and used to go alone, into the worst areas of Detroit, underage, sneaking into clubs to see Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker.

At age 18, she joined her very first band "The Bad Luck and Troubles Blues Band". Eventually a band called 'Julia' came along. They were big in Detroit and peaked with an opening for David Bowie in 1972. Touring with Julia around Michigan got them a successful audition for Bob Seger and subsequently hit the road with him. This was Marcy's first major break.

After 18 months, Marcy moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to form a band with some of Seger's group at the height of the Shelter days. Loads of musicians used to jam together: members of the Gap Band, Leon Russell and Carl Radle, bassist in Derek and the Dominoes. So, when Eric Clapton was looking for a new band, Carl Radle mentioned Marcy and her band. Slowhand paid them a visit and hired them all on the spot, and they went on to record the 461 Ocean Boulevard album together. Marcy couldn't join the band then, because she had already made a commitment to work with Leon Russell for nine months touring the states.

When the tour with Leon finished, Marcy was invited to Jamaica to see her old band just as they were recording Clapton's "There's One in Every Crowd" album. She ended up singing backing vocals and three days later Eric asked Marcy to join the band. Three days progressed into four years of touring, writing and recording with Clapton. Among the co-writes with Eric were: Innocent Times, for his LP "There's No reason To Cry "on which she sang the lead vocal; "Hungry" (written with Dickie Sims, the keyboardist from Tulsa), "Rollit" and "The Core". Marcy says: "We'd just sit in the studio in those days with no preparation and luckily come up with the goods".... Later, Marcy, George Terry, and Eric went on to write the 1977 classic "Lay Down Sally". The song won a BMI Award in 1996 for two million plays so far, a feat that basically means that if you played the record back to back it would take you at least 11 years to achieve!

At the end of 1978, Marcy wanted to kick off her own career and moved to Los Angeles, California. She ended up doing lots of session work for people like Aretha Franklin, George Duke, Stanley Clarke, Al Jarreau, Bette Midler, Phil Collins, and also worked with some of the greatest producers of all time, such as Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin, Glyn Johns, Tom Dowd, Roger Hawkins. There were also sessions for Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager, Leiber and Stoller...the writing for Chaka Khan, Belinda Carlisle...even co-writing the song, Philip Bailey's hit "Walking on the Chinese Wall" and sang on and co-wrote "One Way" for Al Jarreau, doing session work for Jeffrey Osbourne and many more.

In 1985, Marcy co-wrote another song for Eric Clapton called, "Tangled in Love". The song was presented to him and she was asked to join his band again after going down to Montserrat where he was recording his "Behind the Sun" Album. The highlight of that whole stint was doing Live Aid in June of 1985 in Philadelphia, performing on a revolving stage to an audience of around 105,000 people, broadcast to millions around the world.

A year later Marcy decided to get on with her own career and went back to Los Angeles, only to be introduced to Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and his wife, Siobhan Fahey. Siobhan was in the process of leaving her band, Banarama at the time. She was looking to start a band which would end up being called, Shakespear's Sister, and Marcy was eventually asked to become a part of it. During that time Marcy changed her name to Marcella Detroit to give her a new lease on life. Marcy always injected her soul/r&b roots into the group. They ended up recording two albums together, the first one being "Sacred Heart" and the second one, "Hormonally Yours"; the latter album won them many awards in the UK, and their single from that album (on which Marcy was mainly featured) called "Stay", was number one for eight weeks in the UK and also was in the top five in the Billboard charts in The USA in 1992.

The band split up in 1993 due to personality differences. Marcy went on to do a solo album for London records entitled, "Jewel" which did well in the UK , Europe and Australia. After that, she released an album on her co-owned label with her manager at the time, called "Feeler" which was very successful in Japan and Australia -with some moderate success in Europe.

Nearly two years ago, she released another album on her own label called "Dancing Madly Sideways" which is available only on her website. This record is quite adventurous and received some very positive recognition from Billboard magazine.

Two years ago, Marcy was introduced to blues great, Barry Goldberg, the keyboardist who is co-writer, [along with Jerry Goffin], of the classic, "Use My Imagination", the major hit recorded by Gladys Knight and the Pips. Barry has played with many blues legends including Muddy Waters, as well as Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and he produced an album for Tracy Nelson, with her classic rendition of "Mother Earth" and "Down So Low".

After performing with Barry in some clubs in Los Angeles, as well as doing the annual San Francisco Blues Festival last September, Marcy felt a tremendous need to get back to her blues/soul/r&b roots and asked Barry if he'd be interested in doing a record together. He jumped on the opportunity and they've been in the studio creating several new songs and just enjoyed performing at the annual Chicago Blues Festival.