Long before Lynda Carter donned her famous television role as Wonder Woman, She was a singer.
Now, she’s getting back with a new CD and a cabaret tour. According to the leader of her band, drummer Paul Leim, Carter is incredibly a talented singer. And he hopes, that everybody will get a chance to experience the real Lynda Carter instead of the actress from the cartoon. Paul worked with Carter since her “Wonder Woman” days.
Her album contains music like “Cry Me a River”, “Blues in the Night” and “Summertime” as well as “Million Dollar Secret”.
She even covers the Etta James classic “At Last”, a song that also gives the CD its name.
Listeners might be surprised at the strength of her voice and the soulful meaning of her songs, back-up by top notch studio musicians.
On this day, she wears a short embroidered jacket, tight silk shirt and black leggings– loosing a little of her head-turning looks.
She’ll be appearing this month on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard and then Lincoln Center in New York. In April, there’s a fundraiser in Washington and a one night stand in Modesto, California. And, in June, she’ll be at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Carter, who grew up in Phoenix, got her first professional singing job at age of 14. When she reach 17, she was on the road playing the Catskills, club in the Reno-Tahoe area, and made her debut at the Sahara Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas in a band called The Garfin Gathering.
In 1972, she won the Miss World-USA title and four years later she landed the super hero role as Wonder Woman, which she played until 1979.
Carter, who released her first album in 1978 and perform in several prime-time specials in the 1980s, has returned to performing of late as her two children with her second husband, lawyer Robert Altman, become young adults. She appeared in “The Dukes of Hazzard , “Sky High” and the TV series “Smallville”.
In 2005, Carter returned to singing and performing in a London performance of “Chicago”, and a year later was part of the musical’s 10th anniversary show on Broadway.
She dipped her toe in cabaret in 2007, playing small venues in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Leim is working on a live CD of a show that she did in front of a nine-piece band at Harrah’s Casino in Atlantic City, N.J.
In early June 2008, Carter found a body floating in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. while rowing out of the Potomac Boat Club. She called out to some fishermen and waited for the police to arrive.That same month, she admitted in an interview to People magazine that she had entered a rehabilitation clinic for treatment of chronic alcoholism.
In spite of the new work, she knows that she’ll never fully escape the legacy of the Amazonian title role as Wonder Woman. Perhaps only when someone new wear her old suit.
“It needs to be done again,” she says. “I think they should. I’m the first one to pass that baton and I hope it makes a bizzilion dollars.” says Carter.
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