'Electrifying' Melbourne singer who swam against the tide of pop

Wendy Saddington
Blues and soul singer
26-9-1949 – 21-6-2013

The intensely private blues and soul singer Wendy Saddington has died peacefully, aged 63, in her sleep at her Albert Park apartment, near the sea she loved, around midnight on the winter solstice. Diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in March, she was nursed at home by a dear friend, her flatmate for decades, and her final days were peaceful.

Wendy Saddington with Phil Manning and Chain.Credit: Philip Morris

Saddington's early life is a mystery even to her friends. She was a single child born to Henry Saddington and Connie Evans in Melbourne in 1949. They were ''very loving parents'', said long-term friend and visual artist Claire Humphrys, wife of the Loved Ones singer, Gerry Humphrys. Despite this, the singer seemed to carry a subterranean sadness that made her a perfect vessel for the blues. ''I don't know how that happened, but she had a real chip on her shoulder, and it was huge,'' said Humphrys. Saddington, briefly a typist, sang in Melbourne coffee lounges before bursting onto the scene in 1967 in Melbourne psychedelic soul band the Revolution. At 17 she joined one of Australia's most impressive bands, James Taylor Move, in June 1968, but they'd disbanded by year's end. Not, however, before Saddington was named ''The Face of '68'' by pop-music magazine Go-Set.

''I'll never forget the first time I saw her,'' said Humphrys, ''this tiny little person with this huge voice and hair in constant motion, like shivering grass, like smoke. All the musos wanted to get her in bed - she had to fight them off and fight for her place on stage. It was a constant battle.''

Wendy Saddington's trademark kohled eyes, pale, sombre lips and enormous Afro suited her wildcat purr and other-worldly rhythm-and-blues improvisations.. On her small but powerful frame, singlets, vests, Levis and lashings of gypsy jewellery defied the ''girly'' look then expected of the tiny percentage of females who managed to fight their way into the spotlight.

Identifying as lesbian, Saddington soon became a beacon of the emerging gay liberation movement, appearing with drag troupe Sylvia and the Synthetics and at women-only dances. Off stage, friends found her witty, sensitive and caring, and she delighted them with little abstracted drawings of dots and stars.

In 1968, Perth blues band the Beaten Tracks relocated to Melbourne. Saddington renamed them the Chain (later shortened to Chain), after her idol Aretha Franklin's Chain of Fools, touring with them until May 1969.

Her advice column, ''Wendy Saddington takes care of business'', for Go-Set from 1969-71 ''got dozens of genuine cris de coeur each week'', according to then editor Phillip Frazer, and she approached it ''with earnest concern''. At Go-Set she also interviewed dynamic soul shouter Jeff St John about a ''fiasco'' on a certain TV pop show. St John, born with spina bifida, had requested his prerequisite stool but had been ''forced to perform, propped precariously, on a slippery studio floor on my crutches'', he notes on his website. Throughout the interview, ''being the champion of causes that she was'', Saddington ''took [the program] thoroughly to task''.

The singer joined St John's extraordinary Copperwine in 1970: ''She was just suddenly there and I was happily sharing the stage with one of the most electrifying voices and personalities I have ever been graced to know,'' wrote St John. When he wasn't able to appear at the Wallacia rock festival, Saddington fronted the band alone, a performance captured in her only commercially available album, Wendy Saddington & The Copperwine Live, in January 1971.

''I'd really like to help somebody,'' said Saddington at the time, ''like Nina Simone, Bob Dylan [do] … They teach people things.''

Accordingly, she chose to record protest songs such as Simone and Langston Hughes co-written song, Backlash Blues, growling, ''Mr Backlash/Just who do you think I am/You raise my taxes/Freeze my wages/And send my son to Vietnam'', when all around her, all-male boogie bands and glossy pop pin-ups were singing about being left by their babies. There were also originals such as Five People Said I Was Crazy. Unsatisfied, Saddington immediately denounced the album, although had approved its re-release by 2011.

Her only single, Looking Through A Window, written by Chain bandmate Warren Morgan, was a MacArthur Park-style opus that peaked at No.22 in September 1971.

In 1973, Saddington starred as the Nurse in the Who's rock opera, Tommy, at the Melbourne Music Bowl, alongside Keith Moon and the cream of Australia's rock talent. She turned her back on Melbourne for Sydney dates through the 1980s with her Wendy Saddington Band, and in the early '90s, with keyboard player Peter Head (Headband, Mount Lofty Rangers).

Saddington's voice had a more finessed purity before smoking and age had their way. Nevertheless, her favourite recording, Hare Krishna Band with Wendy Saddington, a later limited-edition cassette, features a stunning version of Bob Marley's Redemption Song.

Also known as Gandharvika Dasi, the singer felt she was saved by Krishna. At the nearby temple in Albert Park, hers was the loudest voice in the congregation.

At the South Port Community Residential Home in Albert Park, she ''visited, entertained and gave joy to so many of the elderly patients'' for many years, ''sprinkling them with water from the Ganges River'', according to relatives.

Her last major concert was in December 2012, A Soul Seance, with singer Henry Manetta in Melbourne.

Karise Eden, winner of The Voice 2012, is a new-generation fan. ''I question everything musically I've ever known,'' wrote Eden on Facebook, after recently discovering Saddington. ''This woman is amazing.''