Sally Stevens has worked in the music industry of Hollywood in Sound Recordings, Film Scoring, TV Scoring, Commercials, and Concerts for six decades, as a solo singer/choral director/vocal contractor, and lyricist. She has contracted choirs for composers John Williams, James Horner, James Newton Howard, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Tyler Bates, Alan Silvestri, Dave Grusin, Alf Clausen, Marc Shaiman, and others.  She also served as Choral Director for the Oscars broadcasts for over 22  years, working with Bill Conti, Marvin Hamlisch, Bill Ross, and others who served as Musical Director of the Oscars. 

 

She has written lyrics for film, television, and sound recordings, for composers Dominic Frontiere, Dick De Benedictis, Burt Bacharach, Dave Grusin, Mike Melvoin, Artie Kane, A.Trovaioli, and Don Ellis. The song “Who Comes This Night?” (Music by Dave Grusin, Lyrics by Sally Stevens) was included by James Taylor in his first Christmas album.

 

While still at UCLA in 1959, two of her own songs were produced by Herb Alpert with her as the artist and released on DOT Records, and thus began her more serious connection with the industry. In 1960, she toured with the Ray Conniff Singers, in 1962 with Nat “King” Cole in concert, and also during that time worked as a production singer in Las Vegas at Harrah’s Hotel.       

 

She was hired in the mid-sixties as a singer for the weekly Danny Kaye Variety TV show, and did three seasons, also singing occasionally on the Red Skelton,  Carol Burnett, and Smothers Brothers TV Shows, all at CBS. Gradually work grew for her as a “free lance” session singer, and she sang on many record sessions, film scores and commercials with Ron Hicklin as part of the Ron Hicklin Singers, and for other vocal contractors. She has sung over the six decades on nearly a thousand film and television scores.  In 1978 she also became the “on -camera” spokesperson in TV ads for Los Angeles radio station KBIG.

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In the seventies, the Recording Academy established for a time, an “MVP” award for outstanding session musicians and singers, and Sally Stevens was awarded Best Female Backup Singer for five years in succession. She was eventually given the Emeritus Award. 

 

Miss Stevens also toured in concert with Burt Bacharach as a solo singer through the late sixties/seventies, and traveled for concerts to South America, The Philippines, and Canada, in addition to seasonal Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe concerts, and East Coast summer concert tours.

She worked only as a solo or choral singer for her first 25 years in the business. In the mid-eighties, she was asked to do vocal contracting for Danny Elfman, and soon other composers reached out to her for work in that capacity,  so vocal contracting became another major career activity, and has continued on into current years.  Along the way, she worked regularly on The Simpsons and Family Guy, as singer and vocal contractor from the inception of both shows, and sings on the Main Titles still being played.

 

Miss Stevens served on the National Boards of Directors for SAG and AFTRA (now merged as SAG-AFTRA) for over 40 years.  She also served as a national officer for both unions and as a Trustee of the Recording Academy.  She currently still serves as Trustee of the SAG AFTRA Health Fund and Trustee of the AFTRA Retirement Funds.

 

She has also enjoyed writing over the years, and her short fiction, poetry and personal essays have appeared in MockingHeart Review, Raven’s Perch, The OffBeat, The Missouri Review, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Los Angeles Press, The McNeese Review, Funny in Five Hundred, and Between the Lines Anthology: Fairy Tales & Folklore Re-imagined. Her memoir, I SANG THAT, was published in the fall of 2022, and a second book – fiction/fantasy/humor, “THE ODYSSEY OF MRS. NAOMI BILLINGSLEY” was published in January of 2024.