Cutting country hits far from Nashville
By Mary Campbell AP News features writer
Can a British girl with a hyphenated name cut a record as far away from Nashville as London and get a country hit in the United States?
Sure. Olivia Newton-John did it with If You Love Me, Let Me Know
and then she did it with Let Me Be There.
Both became pop hits, too, and sold a million copies. Now she's recorded I Love You, I Honestly Love You
and advance orders are so strong that it's on the best-selling charts before it's in most of the stores.
And Olivia Newton-John hasn't yet set foot in Nashville.
She won a Grammy Award in the best country female vocal performance
category this year with Let Me Be There
and says, It's probably the first time an English person won an award over Nashville people.
But she wants to go to Nashville and says, I don't think it makes any difference where you make a record. I did hear about one lady singer who wasn't too happy about me, but I don't think they'll eat me there. I want to go there: I'm not afraid. The problem is just finding time to go.
Miss Newton-John, that's her real name, moved from Wales to Australia with her family at age five. Her father was master of the college at Ormond College in Australia. She liked to sing and entertain people as a child and at 13 entered a contest for a Haley Mills look-alike. She remembers that she won it but can't remember how many girls entered Probably two.
She and three other girls started a singing group called the Sol Four, stopped that when it interfered with high school. She entered another contest, this time singing and won, the prize was a trip to London. There she became half a duo with another Australian girl, Pat Carroll, but Miss Carroll's visa expired and she returned to Australia. Since 1971, Miss Newton-John has been singing solo.
I've been singing since I was 15; that's 10 years. I enjoyed the group and the double act but I think I've enjoyed being on my own most. You have only yourself to blame.
I always listened to folk music. I don't think it was too much planned that I'd become a country singer. But my record producer was quite keen on that music and thought it suited me and nobody else around London was doing it, so I did it.
Editor's note: Olivia's family moved from Cambridge, England to Australia, not from Wales.