{"id":37949,"date":"2021-12-10T01:52:44","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T09:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=37949"},"modified":"2021-12-08T10:58:06","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T18:58:06","slug":"a-lifelong-love-of-performing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2021\/12\/10\/a-lifelong-love-of-performing\/","title":{"rendered":"A lifelong love of performing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Left to right, the Hot Mammas are Mary Ella Young, Julie Brown, Georgina Arntzen. (photo by Dee Lippingwell)<\/em><\/p>\n

The Hot Mammas are busy this holiday season \u2013 and year round. With three albums to their credit, they perform at venues ranging from jazz clubs to shopping malls. Readers can next see them at Robson Square Skating Rink on Dec. 15, and then at Water Street Caf\u00e9 Dec. 18.<\/p>\n

One of the holiday songs the group performs is \u201cMamma Julie\u2019s Hanukkah Song,\u201d so dubbed by Georgina Arntzen and Mary Ella Young because the third member of the Hot Mammas, Julie Brown, wrote it, and \u201ctoo many songs are called \u2018The Hanukkah Song\u2019 or \u2018Festival of Lights.\u2019\u201d (A video of it can be found via facebook.com\/thehotmammas.)<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s Jewish heritage is Ashkenazi. \u201cMy maternal grandfather, who I\u2019m named after (Julius Cohen), was a rabbi,\u201d she told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cMy father always followed our traditions. My mother was a phenomenal cook and it\u2019s because of her I\u2019m able to make latkes, matzo balls, knishes, chicken soup, etc. When she didn\u2019t want me to understand something she and her sisters were talking about over the phone, she\u2019d suddenly switch from English to Yiddish. That\u2019s where and how I picked up some fun expressions, which I use to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Montreal, Brown said she has been performing music since she could walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy older, late, great <\/em>brother Martin Overland was the founding member of the Canadian folk group the Raftsmen,\u201d she said. \u201cYour readers may recall the song \u2018Something to Sing About,\u2019 which was one of their hits. Martin had perfect pitch and the voice of an angel. He was also a terrific guitarist and accordionist. Eleven years my senior, we would sing together in harmony when I was a very young child. I still recall performing \u2018Buttons and Bows\u2019 in front of a roomful of relatives and friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the opportunity arose as a 10-year-old to actually sing on camera, I jumped at the chance. The Montreal kids show was called Small Fry Frolics<\/em> and there I was with my cousin Shirley singing the Everly Brothers\u2019 \u2018Bye Bye Love\u2019! At 15, I joined a rock band, while singing lead as Carmen in high school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe singing\/performing didn\u2019t stop at teacher\u2019s college either,\u201d she added. \u201cMcGill\u2019s Macdonald College offered a two-year teaching diploma program at the time and, much to my delight, also had yearly talent shows.\u201d<\/p>\n

During her teaching days, Brown brought her ukulele to class. \u201cThe kids were as crazy about the Beatles as I was and we sang our buttinsky\u2019s off to start the day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While at university, Brown performed in stage plays and film. She recalled working on a movie directed by John Huston, which featured Sophia Loren \u2013 \u201cand I was fortunate enough to garner a wee speaking role when Ms. Loren walked over to a table of background performers of which I was one, and asked me a question. I wasn\u2019t supposed to answer her as a silent on-camera person but spontaneously blurted out a comment because I didn\u2019t want to be rude. (Out of my peripheral vision, I noticed John Huston smacking his forehead.) And that was how I got my first ACTRA permit! Even after moving out to Vancouver and doing radio full time, I still continued to audition for film, TV and did a lot of voice work. In fact, I was the Telus voice for nearly 15 years \u2013 \u2018We\u2019re sorry, the number you have dialed is not in order. Please hang up and try your call again.\u00a0Thank you, from Telus.\u2019 That was me and one of 40 or so prompts I did for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown left Montreal after the Front de lib\u00e9ration du Qu\u00e9bec \u201craised its ugly head in Quebec\u201d and the Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois was in power.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy child came home in tears from school with a notice that all English-speaking children had to be educated in French the following year,\u201d she explained. \u201cFrench didn\u2019t come easy to my son but it was more than that. We lived in Canada, or so I thought. Stop signs had Nazi slogans scrawled across them. Shop windows in the English and Jewish communities were smashed and vandalized. An elderly Jewish woman who couldn\u2019t speak French and wanted to order flowers for a friend was disgustingly treated over the phone because she was trying to place her order in English. The clerk hung up on her.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a teaching friend once said to me, if you say, \u2018ich bin a Yid,\u2019 you get it from both sides. I still don\u2019t think the rest of Canada realized just how dangerous and revolting that regime was. Well, I did\u2026. We came out to Vancouver for a visit and, with tears in his eyes, my son asked if we could move. And we did just that in 1978.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within a week, Brown got a job as a news broadcaster at CFMI, the sister station to CKNW.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot long after that, the program director allowed me to develop an interview show as well. I had been doing interviews at the Montreal radio station, along with news, so this was a huge relief to me. I love people and am a naturally curious person, so interviewing was, and still is, a good fit.\u00a0 My radio career blossomed here in Vancouver. Eventually, I co-wrote, co-produced and co-hosted Vancouver at Noon<\/em> on KISS-FM for 11 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her more than two decades as a broadcaster, Brown interviewed hundreds of people, including Bob Hope, Paul Newman, Shirley MacLaine, Johnny Depp, Leonard Cohen, Eartha Kitt, Sarah McLachlan, Neil Diamond, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, Jackie Collins, Jim Byrnes, Rick Hansen and Dee Lippingwell.<\/p>\n

For Brown, singing in choirs has always fed her soul, and it was in one of those choirs she met Arntzen and in another that they met Young. The Hot Mammas have been together now for 11 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are both family to me \u2013 my sisters,\u201d said Brown. \u201cAll three of us love performing because we give to our audiences and they give back. Something magical and marvelous happens, no matter where we are or how many or how few people are in that audience. Synergy. Energy. Love. Music heals. It is the \u2018universal language.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sing songs we love. That\u2019s how we choose our repertoire. Jazz, pop, rock \u2019n\u2019 roll, folk, show tunes, you name it. We don\u2019t just cover groups. We also write originals. In fact, one of our tunes is called \u2018The Hot Mammas\u2019 Song,\u2019 and it\u2019s quite amusing \u2013 all about being mothers who love their kids but have \u2018traded in their aprons for a microphone.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For more, visit thehotmammas.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Left to right, the Hot Mammas are Mary Ella Young, Julie Brown, Georgina Arntzen. (photo by Dee Lippingwell) The Hot Mammas are busy this holiday season \u2013 and year round. With three albums to their credit, they perform at venues ranging from jazz clubs to shopping malls. Readers can next see them at Robson Square […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[4970,6873,21065,21064,8977,21066,7826],"class_list":["post-37949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-broadcasting","tag-film","tag-hot-mammas","tag-julie-brown","tag-singing","tag-trio","tag-tv"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}