Canadian Shirley Eikhard, Something To Talk About songwriter, dead at 67 | 24CA News
Singer-songwriter Shirley Eikhard, who received two Juno Awards and helped Bonnie Raitt to comeback success by penning one in all her greatest hits, has died of most cancers. She was 67.
Longtime good friend Deborah Duggan says the musician died early Thursday at a hospital in Orangeville, Ont., surrounded by these closest to her.
In addition to Raitt, Eikhard’s songs had been coated by, or written for, the likes of Cher, Amy Grant, Rita Coolidge and Emmylou Harris.
For Eikhard, music was a lifelong ardour and pursuit. Born in Sackville, N.B., to oldsters who each performed musical devices, she was residing in Oshawa, Ont., by the point of her debut 1969 look on the famend Mariposa Folk Festival, simply barely into her teenagers.
At age 15, she penned It Takes Time, a No. 1 grownup modern hit on the Canadian charts for Anne Murray in 1971. That resulted in tv appearances on the Anne Murray Special and Tommy Hunter Show on CBC.
By 1972, Eikhard was telling a newspaper reporter of her shift from earlier people materials to “country pop.” Releasing a self-titled debut album that 12 months, she received Junos for greatest feminine nation artist in 1973 and 1974.
The debut album combined originals and covers, together with a model of Sylvia Tyson’s Smiling Wine, which garnered Canadian radio airplay.
Eikhard’s cowl of Fleetwood Mac’s Say You Love Me, from 1976’s Let Me Down Easy, did as effectively.
That identical 12 months, she talked with the Globe and Mail concerning the challenges of attempting to determine a profitable profession whereas staying in Canada, describing performing as a refuge.
“Those few hours when I’m up on stage mean everything to me,” she mentioned.
Struggles within the Nineteen Eighties, then a shock
There was a 10-year hole in her recorded output, till 1987’s Taking Charge, as Eikhard handled voice points.
Years later, she would describe her life as close to its “nadir” as that decade ended, although she co-wrote a music, Kick Start My Heart, that landed on Alannah Myles’s self-titled 1989 album.
Commercial success quickly got here for Eikhard, because of one in all a variety of songs she cranked out within the mid-Nineteen Eighties whereas staying in Nashville.
That music, Something to Talk About, was recorded by Bonnie Raitt for 1991’s Luck of the Draw, which enabled the American singer-guitarist to cement a industrial comeback that had begun two years earlier, with Nick of Time.
Raitt praised Eikhard as “one of the most talented women I’ve ever heard” at a Toronto live performance that 12 months.
In this 1999 interview, Shirley Eikhard talks about how she received into music, her success and her early recordings.
Something to Talk About was nominated for Record of the Year on the 1992 Grammys, with Raitt incomes the award for Best Pop Vocal Performance for the music.
Eikhard’s first album after that bump in public profile — 1995’s If I Had My Way — noticed her return to acquainted musical territory.
Then three years later, she was recording for the legendary Blue Note jazz label. For Eikhard, it was not a jarring shift, having included Billie Holiday songs in her set listing for years.
Eikhard’s most up-to-date album was 2021’s On My Way to You.
