Mary Cleere Haran

Mary Cleere Haran first surfaced amid the 1980s resurgence of classic pop and cabaret performance. Born the second of eight siblings into an Irish Catholic household, she was the daughter of a theater-and-film professor at San Francisco City College. Her childhood unfolded amid constant exposure to the music and motion pictures of the 1930s and 1940s, which fostered an enduring devotion to the songwriters of that period. She started performing while still a teenager, then relocated to New York in the late 1970s. There she made her Broadway bow in 1979, portraying a band singer in The 1940s Radio Hour. After touring with the production she took up residence in New Jersey and began working the local club circuit. Her formal cabaret debut came at New York’s Ballroom in 1988, drawing immediate praise from reviewers. Appearances soon followed at leading venues across major cities, and she issued her first album, There’s a Small Hotel (Live at the Algonquin), on Columbia Records in 1992. While also employed as a researcher and television producer for PBS, Haran sustained an active concert schedule and released a steady succession of recordings: This Heart of Mine: Classic Movie Songs of the Forties (1994), This Funny World: The Songs of Lorenz Hart (1995), Pennies from Heaven (1998), and The Memory of All That: Gershwin on Broadway. Crazy Rhythm appeared in the autumn of 2000.