![]() Hunter remembered the warmth and sincerity that MacNeil conveyed through her songs to people in the studio audience and to the viewers at home. When she sang Working Man there wasn't a dry eye in the house." "Coming from a coal mining area she had a soft spot in her heart for those miners. "The one vivid memory I have is when Rita was a guest on my show," said singer Tommy Hunter. MacNeil's soprano and Murray's alto blended well together, says Murray, adding with a laugh that "my voice is so low, I can sing below anybody." I always do my best to make people as comfortable as possible and I thought I was really good at it, and then Rita came along …but she did it and she did it well because she is a consummate professional. "She was so sweet and humble" Murray remembered, but "she was so nervous, she was throwing up. "It shows the strength of her character that she was able to achieve all the success that she did." Although the two women had the same manager, Leonard Rambeau, they didn't meet until the early 1990s when MacNeil and the Rankin Family were guests on a television special Murray was filming in Halifax. "Rita had many, many obstacles to overcome," said Murray. You could be from anywhere, but I was from Nova Scotia and I knew every place she was talking about," said Murray who was born in the Springhill, a mining town like Pond Harbour, and the site of two dreadful mining disasters in the late 1950s. "Her songs just tore at your heart strings. "I don't know of another woman who did that," she said. "I'm a proud Nova Scotian, as she was." And to hear "a woman, an honest-to-God really fine craftsman writing songs about Nova Scotia," thrilled Murray. She was able to put it into words and music so beautifully." ![]() Murray says MacNeil's haunting lyrical songs "represent Nova Scotia and how she felt about it, and how so many of us feel about. What you saw was what you got and to know her, even to meet her, was to love her." She thinks MacNeil resonated with audiences because "she was so real. "I also covered This Season Will Never Grow Old, which is "one of my top five favourite Christmas songs of all time."Īcquaintances more than friends, Murray had a great respect for MacNeil's professionalism and sincerity. Murray covered MacNeil's Flying on Your Own, with which "a lot of women identified," she said in an interview from Florida where she spends February through April. "I am deeply saddened by the loss of a dear sweet woman and a gifted singer-songwriter who represented women and her beloved Nova Scotia so eloquently in her songs," said Anne Murray, who also hails from Nova Scotia. ![]() Tributes poured in after news of her death was posted on MacNeil's website.
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