Marilyn McCoo

Vocalist Marilyn McCoo appears on several million-selling 5th Dimension singles, among them “Wedding Bell Blues,” “One Less Bell to Answer,” and “(Last Night) I Didn’t Get to Sleep at All.” Born to a physician, she began performing as a child and kept singing through grammar school and high school. During her teenage years she showcased her voice on Art Linkletter’s Talent Scouts. Around age nineteen her family relocated to Los Angeles, where she modeled and entered beauty pageants, capturing the Miss Bronze California title in 1962. There she encountered photographer Lamonte McLemore. In the early sixties McLemore and McCoo teamed with Floyd Butler and Harry Elston to create the Hi-Fis. Club dates around town attracted the notice of Ray Charles, who took the group on tour in 1965 and produced their jazzy single “Lonesome Mood.” Butler and Elston soon departed to launch the Friends of Distinction, scoring with “Grazing in the Grass,” “Going in Circles,” and “Love or Let Me Be Lonely.”

Childhood friend Billy Davis, Jr., a St. Louis native, reached out to McLemore after receiving a Motown offer. McLemore then brought in fellow St. Louis native Ron Townson along with schoolteacher Florence LaRue, the 1963 Miss Bronze California winner, and together with Davis and McCoo they formed the Versatiles. The ensemble landed on Bob Keene’s Bronco Records, where future “Icon of Love” Barry White served as A&R director. After securing a release from that contract, they moved to Johnny Rivers’ Soul City label—Rivers being known for “Secret Agent Man”—and adopted the name the 5th Dimension under producer Bones Howe. Howe assembled top Los Angeles session musicians from the Wrecking Crew, including bassist Joe Osborn, drummer Hal Blaine, keyboardist Larry Knechtel, and arranger Bob Alcivar. Their debut chart entry, a reading of the Mama and the Papas’ “Go Where You Wanna Go,” reached Billboard’s Top 20 in early 1967. Jimmy Webb’s “Up, Up and Away” climbed to number seven that summer, earned four Grammys in 1968, and supplied the title for their first successful album.

McCoo and Davis wed in 1969, the same year the 5th Dimension achieved their biggest breakthrough. Inspired by Ronnie Dyson’s work in the Broadway musical Hair, the group recorded “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” which held the pop summit for six weeks and reached number six R&B in spring 1969. They later performed the medley in Milos Forman’s 1979 screen adaptation of Hair. The accompanying Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In album went gold, remains their strongest long-player, and featured Neil Sedaka’s “Workin’ on a Groovy Thing.” Portrait followed, yielding “Save the Country,” the gold-certified Burt Bacharach–Hal David composition “One Less Bell to Answer,” and “Puppet Man.”

Although “(Last Night) I Didn’t Get to Sleep at All” and “If I Could Reach You” proved the final Top Ten entries, additional successes arrived with another Bacharach–David song written for the Peter Finch film Lost Horizon—“Living Together, Growing Together”—and “Ashes to Ashes.” In the mid-seventies McCoo and Davis exited the 5th Dimension to work as a duo. Signed to ABC Records, they issued their 1976 debut I Hope We Get to Love in Time, produced by Detroit’s Don Davis. The title track charted modestly, but the follow-up “You Don’t Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show)” topped both the pop and R&B lists in January 1977, with Motown legend James Jamerson on bass. The single and album both earned gold status. Their next release, “Your Love,” reached the R&B Top Ten and pop Top Twenty. During summer 1977 the pair hosted their own CBS variety program, The Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. Show.

The Two of Us appeared on ABC later that year, produced by Motown veteran Frank Wilson and spotlighting “Look What You’ve Done to My Heart,” “Wonderful,” the ballad “My Reason to Be Is You,” and the title track. On Columbia, Marilyn & Billy surfaced in fall 1978; its lone charting single, a cover of “Shine on Silvery Moon,” became a disco-club staple. McCoo’s first solo effort for RCA featured the Bee Gees–penned “Heart Stop Beating in Time,” which registered a modest hit. Additional solo projects include White Christmas on Laserlight in 1996 and The Me Nobody Knows, produced by Chris Christian and Humberto Gatica for EMI Special Products in 1991.

Throughout the eighties she hosted the syndicated series Solid Gold and guest-starred on NBC’s Night Court as well as the daytime drama Days of Our Lives. Stage roles followed in Dreamgirls, Showboat, and Man of La Mancha. In 1990 she co-hosted McDonald’s Gospelfest Pt. 1 with Glynn Turman, later issued on home video. The couple still tours in concert—sometimes reuniting with the 5th Dimension—and appears in theatrical productions such as It Takes Two and Hit With a Hot Note!: The Duke Ellington Songbook. They marked their thirtieth wedding anniversary with a cover story in the August 9, 1999 issue of Jet magazine.