Jane Olivor has a lot in common with Barbra Streisand. She has a similar background - Brooklyn-born, steeped in Tin Pan Alley and the pop-standard-influenced MOR of the seventies, celebrated by gay fans of popular music - but she has a much better voice.
She began recording for Columbia - just like Streisand - after a stint in in the New York cabaret circuit and a gig on a cruise ship. First Night, from 1976, was her first LP, followed by Chasing Rainbows. Her albums tended to feature pop standards like "Some Enchanted Evening." Having cited Johnny Mathis as an influence, Jane Olivor got the break of her life when she got to record with her idol. The pair duetted on "The Last Time I Felt Like This," the theme song from the 1978 movie Same Time, Next Year, based on a play by Bernard Slade and starring Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn as people married to others who carry on an affair by meeting in a seaside inn annually for a weekend. (If you haven't seen the movie, I urge you to do so - for the dialogue alone!) The song, written by Marvin Hamlisch and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, was a huge hit, having come on the heels of Mathis' then-recent collaboration with Deniece Williams (which you already know about).
Personal problems and issues with her record company prevented Jane Olivor from recording and performing throughout most of the eighties. She returned to performing in the early nineties to the delight of her loyal fan base, and she released a new album, Love Decides, in the year 2000; it was her first album of new material since 1982.
After a stint of performances in the new century, Ms. Olivor went on hiatus again in 2008. Though she's seventy years of age at this writing, I'm not sure she's done yet. :-)
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