I Did It!...My Way

Lynne McNeil was singing on CBC television in Vancouver by the mid-1960s. In May 1966 she was one of The Accents, a vocal quartet with Bob Hamper, Brian Griffiths and Brian Gibson. CBC paired the group with former Ink Spots singer Bill Kenny and the Fraser MacPherson Orchestra on The Bill Kenny Show, a half-hour of light popular music produced in Vancouver, and The Accents were among the regular performers on a Vancouver CBC series through the 1965-66 season.

McNeil moved to Toronto in the late 1960s and went to work in the city's busy world of commercials, jingles and studio sessions. Vibraphonist and arranger Hagood Hardy brought her into Hagood Hardy & The Montage as one of two singers alongside Stephanie Taylor, and she spent about five years with the group, touring Canada, the United States and Europe. In August 1970 McNeil, Taylor, Hardy, bassist Gary White and drummer Dave Lewis recorded Hagood Hardy & The Montage (CBC Radio Canada LM-81) at CBC's Studio G in Toronto. Like the rest of the CBC LM series, it was pressed for broadcast use and never sold in stores. Its program ran from 'Scarborough Fair' and 'Nica's Dream' to Barbara Moore's 'Hideaway' and Doug Riley's 'You'.

The commercial album Montage followed on GRT in 1972 (9230-1012), produced by George Semkiw, with Bill Bridges on guitar and Rick Homme on bass. McNeil and Taylor sang and played percussion, and the album included 'My Love', a title McNeil recorded again in 1985, when she was credited as its writer. When RPM reviewed Montage in April 1972, it singled out Hardy's arranging and the voices of Taylor and McNeil.

Television and advertising ran alongside the club and recording work. McNeil sang on The Tommy Hunter Show, Bobby Vinton's television program, Sounds of the Sixties, Bandwagon and The Ray Stevens Show. The job that carried her voice into almost every Canadian home began by chance. She was at Manta Sound when Hardy called her into another studio to show a Bell Canada client how a woman's voice would sound on a commercial. She sang 'Near You', then 'Anytime' and 'Are You Lonesome Tonight', and the telephone-company campaign that grew from that session ran for well over a decade (fifteen years, by her own count). Few viewers knew who was singing. Years later, strangers who learned she was the voice from those commercials would greet her like an old friend, and on stage she liked to tell audiences that her 'Are You Lonesome Tonight' had been a bigger hit than Elvis Presley's.

The early 1970s also placed McNeil in the Canadian Talent Library circle. In 1972 she sang in the six-voice Johnny Burt Society with Stephanie Taylor, Kathy Collier, Les Leigh, Harvey Paterson and Vern Kennedy, backed by a studio orchestra that included Moe Koffman, Guido Basso, Ed Bickert and Peter Appleyard. In 1973 CBC Radio Canada issued her own four-song broadcast record, LM 160, pairing 'Here's That Rainy Day', 'Sophisticated Lady', 'Lush Life' and 'But Beautiful' with guitar accompaniment.

Her first commercial single under her own name came on United Artists in 1974. 'Guilty', backed with 'If I Give My Heart To You', was a Canadian Talent Library production issued as UAXW 577X, and United Artists was still promoting it in RPM that November as part of its Canadian roster. The session work continued. On Vic Franklyn's album Friends, on Quality, she sang in the vocal section with Patti Van Evera and her former Montage partner Stephanie Taylor, alongside soloists Moe Koffman, Guido Basso and Eugene Amaro. RPM named all three singers when it reviewed the album in February 1977.

In the spring of 1983 McNeil went home to Vancouver Island, intending to rest. Within a short time she was driving from the Ladysmith and Chemainus area to sing at the Empress Hotel in Victoria and at hotels and lounges up and down the Island. In April 1985 she took an eight-month engagement in the Clipper Lounge of Vancouver's new Mandarin Hotel, and filled her spare time singing with Dal Richards' big band.

That same year Hollyberry Records of Nanaimo released I Did It!...My Way. McNeil arranged and produced it herself and played Yamaha grand piano, Yamaha DX7 and Roland Juno 60. Apart from drums added afterward by her longtime friend Ken Moore, a University of B.C. instructor and Vancouver Symphony member, every sound on the record was hers. Five songs carried her name, among them 'Ragtime Annie', written with Byron Bellows, and 'Another Way', written with Hollyberry's Leith Boulter. She sang the opening lines of 'Song For Donnie' a cappella with no note or click track to guide her, then built the song from 29 voice tracks. 'Lady Success' held 280 vocal parts. Scott Littlejohn engineered and mixed the sessions at Intimate Sounds in Nanaimo and recalled that there was seldom a second take. McNeil dedicated the album to her cousin Marianne and to two arrangers she revered, Gene Puerling of The Singers Unlimited and Rob McConnell of The Boss Brass.

Dal Richards became one of the longest partnerships of her performing life. Looking back in 2019, she counted 48 years in Richards' band by the time she retired from regular performing at 68. The Ladysmith & District Historical Society remembers her as a hometown singer who appeared on national television and worked with the Dal Richards Orchestra.

Her most personal project gave her a new name. The first Christmas Lady CD took seven years, recorded five hours every Friday, with McNeil writing, arranging and playing the material herself and stacking an estimated 1,100 vocal tracks. Engineer Ron Czar took to greeting her arrivals with sleigh bells and "Here comes the Christmas lady," and the name stuck. By 1997 she was being photographed in Ladysmith as The Christmas Lady.

Her favourite carol was 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'. She corresponded with its composer, Hugh Martin, who wrote to tell her how much her recording of his song meant to him. Christmas had deep family roots for her: her mother, Norma McNeil, and her biological father, Jack Sedon, were married on Christmas Eve.

-Robert Williston