Although Norma Tanega first attracted notice with her buoyant 1966 single “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog,” the singer/songwriter, experimental musician, educator, and painter pursued a far more intricate and extended path than that track alone might indicate. While the title song from her 1966 album blended Greenwich Village folk with accessible pop, her singular voice already surfaced in the wry perspective of “You’re Dead”—later revived in the 2010s as the theme for the film and television series What We Do in the Shadows—and in “Hey Girl,” her pointed revision of Lead Belly’s “In the Pines.” After early commercial momentum faded, she kept shaping music according to her own vision, whether composing for partner Dusty Springfield, joining Blossom Dearie on early-’70s material, introducing psych-rock elements to the 1971 album I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile, or exploring avant-garde textures through later ensembles such as Ceramic Ensemble, Hybrid Vigor, and Baboonz. By the 2010s, her status as an independent innovator was widely acknowledged, with Yo La Tengo, They Might Be Giants, and Thee Oh Sees incorporating her songs into their own sets.
Tanega entered the world in Vallejo, California, in 1939, daughter of a Panamanian mother and a Filipino father who served thirty years as a United States Navy bandmaster before directing his own ensemble. Relocating to Long Beach at age two, she began formal piano instruction at nine and maintained an equal devotion to visual art, overseeing her high school’s art gallery in her final year. She earned a full scholarship to Scripps College and completed an MFA at Claremont College in 1962, during which time she examined the compositions of George Gershwin and Aaron Copland while acquiring acoustic guitar and autoharp through repeated listening to Joan Baez recordings.
Once her studies concluded, Tanega journeyed across Europe before settling in New York City in 1963. Residing in Greenwich Village, she immersed herself in the active folk community, performed regularly at a mental hospital for its patients, and spent summers as a music counselor at a Catskill Mountains camp. Producer Herb Bernstein heard her there and arranged an introduction to Bob Crewe, renowned for his Four Seasons productions. Tanega joined Crewe’s New Voice label in 1965 and issued “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog” the following year. Drawn from her actual pet—kept because her building prohibited dogs—the track fused folk-rock with New York pop-soul production, becoming an international success that reached number three in Canada and number 22 on both the U.S. and U.K. charts. Its reach prompted covers by Barry McGuire, Art Blakey, and the Jazz Crusaders, along with Danish, Dutch, and French adaptations.
To support the single and its parent album Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog, Tanega performed on American Bandstand and Where the Action Is, serving as the only woman on a North American package tour alongside Gene Pitney, Chad & Jeremy, and Bobby Goldsboro. Later that year she traveled to England, appeared on Ready, Steady, Go!, and met Dusty Springfield; the two formed an immediate connection, prompting Tanega’s relocation to London. There she painted and wrote numerous songs Springfield would record, among them “No Stranger Am I” from the debut album and “Come for a Dream,” co-authored with Antônio Carlos Jobim. She also collaborated with Blossom Dearie on a track for the 1970 album That’s Just the Way I Want to Be. Tanega herself recorded the unreleased 1969 album Snow Cycles, then achieved greater visibility with 1971’s I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile, whose relationship-inspired songs incorporated psych-rock shading and featured contributions from the Viscounts’ Don Paul and producer-keyboardist Mike Moran. The record failed to replicate prior chart performance, and by 1972 the partnership with Springfield had ended.
Tanega returned to Claremont, California, and launched an extended teaching career, instructing art, music, and English as a second language in local schools while serving as an adjunct professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She continued painting and performing, shifting toward experimental idioms and frequently appearing as a percussionist. In the 1980s she played with the Ceramic Ensemble, the handmade-instrument project of Scripps ceramics professor Brian Ransom. During the 1990s she formed Hybrid Vigor with Mike Henderson; the duo released its self-titled debut in 1996 and expanded to a trio with Rebecca Jamm for 2000’s II by 3. Around the same period she worked with Robert Grajeda as the Latin Lizards, whose self-titled album appeared in 2001, then partnered with John Zeretzke on Push. Additional projects included a 2008 reunion with Ransom on Internal Medicine and the formation of Baboonz with guitarist Tom Skelly and bassist Mario Verlangieri, who issued their self-titled debut that same year. Two further Baboonz albums followed—2009’s HA! and 2011’s 8 Songs Ate Brains—before Tanega and Steve Rushingwind Ruiz released Twin Journeys in 2012.
By the early 2010s renewed interest in Tanega’s catalog prompted covers of songs from her first album by They Might Be Giants, Thee Oh Sees, Dr. Hook, and Yo La Tengo. Her visibility rose again in 2014 when “You’re Dead” was featured in the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows; the track reappeared in the 2019 television adaptation. Claremont Heritage mounted an exhibition of her paintings in 2018. Tanega died of colon cancer the following year at age 80. In May 2022 Anthology Recordings issued I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings 1964–1971, which gathered Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog, I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile, Snow Cycles, and assorted song sketches.
