Born: 1 December 1945
Birthplace: Paterson, New Jersey
Genre: Vocal Music
Period: `70s - 2000s
Biography:
Bette Midler counts singing as only one of her talents; at times, since 1972, when she first came to national recognition, it has seemed to be the least of her talents. Still, she has managed to score a number of major hits in a roller-coaster career as a recording artist. Born in Paterson, NJ, and raised in Hawaii, Midler early on showed an interest in singing and acting, and by the `60s she had moved to New York and gotten a role in the long-running Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof. Midler developed a nightclub act that included comedy and singing of a variety of kinds of material, including show tunes, pop hits, and even a takeoff on the Andrews Sisters, and appeared with increasing frequency in New York with her accompanist, Barry Manilow. She was signed to Atlantic Records and released The Divine Miss M (1972), which went gold and included a Top Ten single cover of the Andrews Sisters` "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." Bette Midler (1973) was similarly successful.
Midler`s album sales fell off during the rest of the `70s, though her records always reached the Top 100 in the album chart. But in 1979 she starred in the film The Rose, a fictional account of the life of Janis Joplin, and the title track became a Top Ten hit. 1980 saw the release of Midler`s concert film, Divine Madness, and her best-selling book, A View from a Broad. Her next film, Jinxed (1982), however, was a major flop, and subsequent records didn`t fare well. Midler made a cinematic comeback with Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), but it wasn`t until 1989 that she had another pop hit, when her version of "Wind Beneath My Wings" from her film Beaches became a number one hit. This rejuvenated her singing career, and 1990`s Some People`s Lives became a Top Ten, million-selling album, with the song "From a Distance" hitting number two. Midler`s soundtrack album to her 1991 film For the Boys was also a gold-selling hit.
Midler appeared in a television production of the Broadway musical Gypsy that produced a charting soundtrack album in 1993 following the release of her million-selling hits collection Experience the Divine. The gold-selling Bette of Roses (1995) was her first regular album release in five years. Her 1996 film The First Wives Club was a major box office success. In 1998, she switched to Warner Bros. Records and released Bathhouse Betty, which went gold. With film opportunities drying up, the 54-year-old singer/actress turned to television, developing a half-hour network comedy series based on her own life. Though it didn`t last long, Bette premiered on CBS on October 11, 2000; six days later, she released a second Warner Bros. album, also called Bette. During the next five years, Midler covered two seminal artists` songbooks, Rosemary Clooney and Peggy Lee, coming out with her first-ever Christmas record, which included a duet with Johnny Mathis, Cool Yule, in 2006. Duplicate entry '' for key 1
Discography: Discography
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