Stevie Vann Lange | |
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Birth name | Stevie van Kerken |
Also known as | Stevie van Kerken Stevie Lange Stevie Vann |
Genres | Pop, rock, progressive rock |
Labels | Silvertone Records(1995) |
Website | StevieLange.com |
Stevie Vann (born Stevie van Kerken), also known as Stevie Lange, is a Zambian-born British singer and vocal coach. She is best known for her work as a backing vocalist and studio singer for many groups and solo performers in the 1970s and 1980s. As lead vocalist for the group Night, she had two Top Twenty U.S. chart hits in the late 1970s.
Stevie Vann was raised in Mufulira, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) where her father worked as a copper miner and her mother was a physician. She showed an early aptitude for music, playing piano by age six. Encouraged by her parents, she was performing with dance bands by age 12. Soon after turning 16 Stevie starred in her own television variety show and within a few years she had released two solo albums. In high demand as a radio and TV commercial jingle singer while still a teen, she also earned a "Sarie Award" as South Africa's Top Female Vocalist.
Vann met Robert "Mutt" Lange when the two attended the same school in Mufulira, and the two reconnected a few years later while attending Belfast High School in South Africa. The two would play together in a short-lived band named Hocus, later marry and emigrate to the United Kingdom in the 1970s. Stevie Vann found work as a studio singer through the mid and latter part of the decade both on her own and as part of a backing group called "Bones". Among those acts she contributed vocals to were Bijelo Dugme, Sweet, Colin Blunstone, Jim Capaldi, Trevor Rabin, Rick Wakeman and UFO. In 1978 Vann met Chris Thompson while providing backing vocals for the album Watch by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Shortly after Thompson invited her to be a part of "Night", a new band he was forming.