Songs for the Season: Laura McFayden
Laura McFayden, member of Wilmington Big Band and Stardust
LAURA McFAYDEN grew up singing at any and all occasions, her voice a perfect match for pop stylings as well as jazz standards. After high school she headed off to Florida’s Flagler College – a great place to study music – and majored in physical education.
“I felt strongly about the value of sports for young people,” she says. “At the time, there were not enough programs in Florida for children to participate in, and partly because of that, there was a high percentage of delinquent youth. That has changed now.”
After she graduated from Flagler, the Disney Company hired her for its recreation department, connected to the Disney World hotels. As the company developed recreational programs for guests, those programs became part of the company’s growing guest services department. But McFayden wasn’t destined to stay behind the scenes.
“There was a big ski show with skiers needed eight hours a day,” she says. “They needed a small person for the top of their pyramid.”
The troupe drafted McFayden, and suddenly her athletic training and go-for-it attitude combined to make her a professional water skier. After skiing with the Disney show, she went on to Florida’s famed Cypress Gardens and to Ski World, performing off and on between 1973 and 1989.
It took romance to cue the next chapter in McFayden’s career. At a water ski show, she met her future first husband, a professional ice skater. They married, and she traveled with him,trading skis for blades.
“I became a chorus girl for theatrical ice shows and was the first person to put a singing act on the ice,” she says. “And in the theatrical ice skating world I came back to my music roots. I had put my voice on the back burner, but my world became athletics and singing.”
After her marriage ended, McFayden came to Myrtle Beach to sing for the Dixie Stampede show. While there, she also found gigs with a big band whose bassist, Jim McFayden, took more than a musical interest in her. Jim McFayden, from Wilmington, was a member of the Wilmington Big Band, and soon Laura McFayden was its primary vocalist and Jim’s wife.
“Now we own and manage the band,” she says.
The two also formed Stardust, a jazz ensemble that performs standards as well as infuses more recent pop music with jazz. Both groups will be entertaining at private holiday events this month.
“We love this time of year,” she says, emphasizing the timeless appeal in many holiday ballads, from “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” to “White Christmas” and “Mele Kalikimaka,” the Hawaiian holiday standard Stardust recently added to its rotation.
“This music is not going away; it’s timeless,” she says of the big band and jazz repertoires. She loves to see what she terms “the light” come on for listeners when she and her ensemble perform, whether the audience is made up of debutantes or retirement home residents.
“It’s not just notes and melody. This music evokes the time, an era when things were much simpler. And I think there’s a resurgence of the values of that era,” she says.
Laura McFayden, as part of the groups Wilmington Big Band and Stardust, performs at events in the Cape Fear area including a variety of private parties during the holidays.
For info about the ensembles and booking, go to www.lauramcfaydenmusic.com.
Photoshoot location courtesy of Costello’s Piano Bar
Click here to read about ILM diva Sara Westermark.
Click here to read about ILM diva Marva Robinson.
