Alison McCallum (who actually spells her name and was sometimes credited as Alison MacCallum) (born 1951, Sydney, Australia) is an Australian rock singer who had a string of singles in her home country in the late 1960s and 1970s.
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McCallum's pop music career began in 1967 at the age of 16, as the singer to a succession of Sydney bands. She began with the Jeff Bulls Jazz Band soon leaving to join the Big Apple Union, a Sydney soul band, which evolved into Dr Kandy's Third Eye, in which she shared lead vocals with Gulliver Smith, later of Company Caine. Considered to be an "underground" band, they were one of the first psychedelic bands to use strobe lighting and smoke at their gigs. In June 1969 she joined the 7 piece blue eyed soul band This Hallelujah Chorus, sharing lead vocals with another male vocalist, Ed Mayne. It was also during 1969 she recorded a version of The Bee Gees song "To Love Somebody" with Tully for the ABC-TV show Fusions, however this was not be released commercially until 1979 on the "Alberts Archives" compilation, compiled by Glenn A. Baker.
At the end of 1970 she joined Freshwater, a progressive band, who had achieved a certain level of notoriety with their controversial 1970 single "Satan", a song about the Sharon Tate murders. Originally sharing lead vocals with Ian Johnson, by September 1971 she was sole lead vocalist. November 1971 saw the release of her first recorded release with her lead vocals on the bands final single "I Ain't Got The Time", a track that reached the top 20 in the Sydney charts and the top 30 in Australia. After the demise of Freshwater in November 1971 she briefly joined Ray Brown's band One Ton Gypsy before going solo in early 1972, at the age of 21.
In April 1972 her first solo single "Superman", written by Harry Vanda and George Young, was released on RCA Records and reached No.12 on the Australian national charts. This single was flipped with a Ted Mulry composition "Take Me Back". Soon she released her first album Fresh Water, a reference to her former band. The album was produced by the British producer Simon Napier-Bell, who had worked previously with The Yardbirds and T.Rex, and included a mix of rock, jazz and blues. The album was later re-released under the title Any Way You Want Me.
Following this the Pat Alton produced and co-written single, "It's Time", was released and subsequently used on the Australian Labor Party's TV commercial during Gough Whitlam's 1972 Federal election campaign, making McCallum a famous name throughout Australia through saturation radio and television airplay, despite the single failing to chart.
In 1973 she travelled to Europe to perform and showcased "Superman" at the 8th MIDEM International Music Trade Fair in Cannes. She released a further three less successful, but still charting, singles on RCA, including a version of the Rotary Connection song "Teach Me How To Fly", previously a hit for Jeff St John in 1970.
In October 1974 she signed to Albert Productions, and collaborated with two of Australia's more respected singers, Bobbi Marchini and Janice Slater as the Hooter Sisters, releasing a version of Phil Spector's "To Know Him Is To Love Him".
In 1975 she released her second and final hit single "Excuse Me", which spent 42 weeks in the national top 30. This was followed by an album, Alison, which spent just two weeks on the top 100 album chart, and two more unsuccessful singles, the last, in February 1976, missing the charts completely and marking the end of her solo career.
In the late 1970s she concentrated on session work, such as backing vocals on John Robinson's Pity for the Victim and with artists such as Billy Thorpe, Doug Parkinson and Mark Holden. After seeming to retire in the mid-80s, she has not been heard of publicly, although her single "Superman" and a greatest hits compilation under the same name were re-released by RCA in 1979 to cash in on the then successful Superman movie. Since the advent of CDs, only two of her solo tracks have been released on compilation CDs, and none of her solo recordings re-released.
(with lead vocal uncredited on label - Alison McCallum)