Gale Zoë Garnett (born 17 July 1942) is a New Zealand-born Canadian singer best known in the United States for her self-penned, Grammy-winning folk hit "We'll Sing in the Sunshine". Garnett has since carved out a career as an author and actress.
Garnett was born in Auckland, New Zealand, and moved to Canada with her family when she was 11. She made her public singing debut in 1960, while at the same time pursuing an acting career, making guest appearances on television shows such as 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, and Bonanza.
She wrote songs as a hobby and made her New York nightclub debut in 1963 at The Blue Angel Supper Club and was signed by RCA Victor Records that same year. In 1964, her debut album, "My Kind Of Folk Songs" spawned the single "We'll Sing In The Sunshine". The song went to Billboard's #5 position and later earned a Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording.
It sold over one million copies thus gaining gold disc status. Garnett continued to record through the rest of the 1960s with her backing band the Gentle Reign. Her follow-up to "We'll Sing in the Sunshine", "Lovin' Place", which peaked at #54, was her only other single to chart in America. She appeared twice on ABC's Shindig! and The Lloyd Thaxton Show at the height of her singing fame in the mid-1960s.
Garnett delivered a notable performance in the Rankin-Bass feature Mad Monster Party in the late 1960s, with the memorable tunes "Our Time to Shine" and "Never Was a Love Like Mine." At this period she had begun to be more influenced by the counterculture, and had embraced psychedelic themes to some extent. By the late '60s, Garnett and her backing band, Gentle Reign, had become influenced by the hippie counter-cultural movement, embracing psychedelia, singing about rainbows, magic wands, and other enchantments.
Garnett also delivered a notable performance in the 1967 Rankin-Bass film Mad Monster Party that featured the memorable tunes "Our Time To Shine" and "Never Was a Love Like Mine". Finding that she could no longer sell records, she retired from the music business in the early '70s.
On stage she starred in a Canadian production of Hair and in 1975, co-wrote with Tom O’Horgan the music for Starfollowers in an Ancient Land, an Off-Off Broadway production at the La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in New York City’s East Village in addition to appearing in the play. She also wrote and performed two one-person theater pieces, Gale Garnett & Company and Life After Latex. Garnett also did the voice of the "Mother KOIT" liners for KOIT-FM (93.3 FM) in San Francisco in the mid to late 1960s during its progressive rock formatted era (1968–1970).
Garnett went on to appear in feature films such as Mad Monster Party (1967) and on television shows, usually in supporting roles.In subsequent years, she branched out into journalism, writing essays, columns and book reviews for newspapers including Toronto's Globe And Mail, Village Voice and Toronto Life magazine. Her first novel was titled Visible Amazement and she also wrote and performed two, one-person theater pieces, Gale Garnett & Company and Life After Latex.
Garnett also did the voice of the "Mother KOIT" liners for KOIT-FM (93.3 FM) in San Francisco in the mid to late 1960s during its progressive rock formatted era (1968–1970). Gale also appeared in the 2002 film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014) as well as on several television shows, usually in supporting roles.
Garnett published her first novel, a romance titled Visible Amazement, in 1999. She followed with Transient Dancing (2003), the novella Room Tone (2007), and Savage Adoration, her latest release (2009). Last heard she was still alive, well, and active at age of 82 during 2024.
(Edited from Wikipedia & Classic Bands & IMDb)