Denise McCann

Denise McCann (born December 16, 1948, in Clinton, Iowa) is an American-Canadian singer/songwriter.

Biography

Growing up in a musical family, (her grandfather Albert Hews McCann, Sr. was a professional cornet player and singer in Shreveport, Louisiana) Denise began performing early, taking the stage from the age of eight years.

The McCann family moved to California in 1960, first to Berkeley, then Mountain View, and finally Castro Valley, where she attended high school at first Foothill High in Hayward, then the newly-built Canyon High School in Castro Valley in 1964.

McCann became part of the hippie movement during 1967's "Summer of Love" when she worked at the Magic Mountain Festival on Mount Tamalpais and then at the Monterey Pop Festival, where she was befriended by a nervous Jimi Hendrix just before his seminal performance. She appears in the D.A. Pennebaker documentary "Monterey Pop!"

She went on to become a folk singer and songwriter, appearing many times at famed San Francisco folk clubs during the early 1970s, such as The Holy City Zoo, The Drinking Gourd, and The Coffee Gallery, where she would play her distinctive Gibson J-50 guitar (named Betsy Gibson) and sing her self-penned songs.

In 1972 she joined with Bob Smith and Roy Michaels of "Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys" to form a new group called "Rich and Famous (and Denise)". The group only played a few gigs before going their separate ways.

McCann travelled to......
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