page_title: Linda November
section_title: Early years (1940s–1960s)
hierarchical_section_title: Linda November / Biography / Early years (1940s–1960s)
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of singer en:Linda November, taken by her mother Eleanore November
context_page_description: Linda Ellen November is an American singer who has sung tens of thousands of commercial jingles. She was the voice of the singing cat in the Meow Mix commercials, sang the jingle "Galaxy Glue" in the 1981 film The Incredible Shrinking Woman, the "Coke and a Smile" jingle in the classic Mean Joe Greene Super Bowl commercial, and has won many Clio Awards for her work on television and radio. Her voice can also be heard on many pop songs, as she was a regular backup singer for artists such as Frankie Valli, Burt Bacharach, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Neil Diamond. In the 1970s, she was one of the main singers in the disco group Wing and a Prayer Fife and Drum Corps, which charted with the Top 40 hit "Baby Face" in 1976. In the 1980s and 1990s she was a regular performer in Atlantic City at The Grand and Harrah's, with her husband, composer and arranger Artie Schroeck. As of 2011, she works as a piano accompanist in Las Vegas, Nevada.
context_section_description: November was born in Brooklyn, the older of two children to Eleanore and Julius November. Her father was an attorney to clients such as boxer Floyd Patterson, and her younger brother Philip became an attorney as well. She started her career in music as a concert pianist, playing piano from the age of five.  However, she lost interest in the piano as a teenager and turned to singing instead, helped by the fact that she learned she had perfect pitch.  She attended Thomas Jefferson High School, then The High School of Music & Art, and then from the age of 15 began studying voice with Beverly Johnson at Juilliard. She developed a strong soprano voice, described by The Dallas Morning News as "high, strong, and unwontedly pure".
  At the age of 16, she got a lucky break because of a visit to a podiatrist. The doctor had an office at Broadway and 42nd Street, in what had been a fashionable Knickerbocker Hotel suite in the early 1900s, the New York residence of opera singer Enrico Caruso (1873–1921). So the doctor would often entertain visitors who were there to see the Caruso memorabilia. While she herself was at the office, November met another patient who had contacts in the music industry, and she sang an impromptu audition. The patient was impressed, and put her in touch with one of his contacts, manager Gus Schirmer (of the Schirmer Music publishing family), who was looking for "pretty sopranos" for his summer musicals. Schirmer introduced her to Broadway composer Richard Rodgers, who became her mentor, and through Schirmer, November also auditioned for other producers such as Lawrence Kasha. She obtained work as a performer in the 1963 summer musical season in Dallas, Texas, but despite many auditions, could never land a job in Broadway theatre (according to November, this was because she never had the exact look that a particular show was looking for).  Then Schirmer got her a job singing at an industrial musical for Ford Motor Company, where she met many other successful musicians, singers, and composers such as Ray Charles. He began incorporating her into sessions with the Ray Charles Singers, a group of performers with a rotating membership that would sing in close harmonies, often on productions with singer and television personality Perry Como, or as backup singers for other recordings. This launched November's career as a studio singer, as she worked on a contract basis for many different productions. From 1962 to 1967 November would rotate in and out as part of the Ray Charles Singers, sometimes seen on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall variety program. She can also be heard as a backup singer on some Frank Sinatra recordings, such as the soprano voice in the background of the 1967 song, "The World We Knew".
caption: Linda November, 1963
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