Education
She attended Pattonville High School in Maryland Heights, Missouri near Saint Louis and sang high soprano with the Suburb Choir, a 150-voice unit that performed annually with the Saint Louis Symphony.
She attended Pattonville High School in Maryland Heights, Missouri near Saint Louis and sang high soprano with the Suburb Choir, a 150-voice unit that performed annually with the Saint Louis Symphony.
Her recording and performing career stretched from 1965-1976. McCormick started her career singing songs by Tina Turner and Etta James before joining
In 1967, she was the lead singer in a band called the Klassmen and released a single called "Without You" which had success in Missouri. In 1969 was formed in Los Angeles, their first album entitled "A Group Called," featured McCormick as the primary vocalist. mainly played and recorded covers of popular and soul songs and made the top five with a remake of "Baby lieutenant"s You", charting higher than the previous hit version by The Shirelles.
"s version was also featured in Quentin Tarantino"s film Proof, part of the Grindhouse double feature.
After the group disbanded, McCormick went on to record three solo albums. Gayle McCormick was released on American Broadcasting Company Dunhill in 1971, Flesh And Blood on Decca/Master of Computer Applications in 1972 and One More Hour on Fantasy in 1974.
In the fall of 1971, her performance of "lieutenant"s A Cryin" Shame" charted at #44 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became a Top Ten hit on the Adult Contemporary chart. In 1973 Gayle married and relocated to Hawaii.
McCormick recorded the tracks "Coming In Out of the Rain" and "Simon Said" for a 1975 single on the Shady Brook label.
lieutenant scraped the lower reaches of the Adult Contemporary chart that fall. McCormick also contributed backing vocals to Jimmy Rabbitt and Renegade"s Waylon Jennings-produced 1976 self-titled Capitol LP from which the single "Ladies Love Outlaws" was drawn. In 2015, McCormick was hospitalized for pneumonia and during the treatment it was discovered that she had cancer which had metastasized from a tumor in a lung to the rest of her body.
McCormick died of cancer March 1, 2016 in suburban Saint Louis.
She was 67 years old.