“All of a sudden, this European company wanted me to do videos,” Basil recalls. But 10 years later, she sang the jazz number “ Wham Rebop Boom Bam” on both Saturday Night Live Season 1 and The Merv Griffin Show, which led to sold-out shows at the Sunset Strip’s Roxy club and renewed interest in her as a potential pop star. “Basilotta appears to have primarily wielded creative control, selecting songs and instrumental musicians, devising the creative concepts for the recordings, and even helping Mathieson mix the master tapes.”īasil made her recording debut back in 1966 with the title song for Bruce Conner’s short art film Breakaway (which is considered by many pop scholars to be one of the first music videos), but then, as she explains to Yahoo/SiriusXM, her “career took a different lane” with choreography and acting. “There is strong evidence that artistic control lay solely with Basilotta, not with the recording company or - by extension - Mathieson,” the judges wrote. In January 2020, Basil released a “recut from scratch” new recording of her signature song under the title “ Hey Mickey,” featuring “one of the original Dorsey High cheerleaders that originally did the chant in the first place,” because, as she tells Yahoo Entertainment/ SiriusXM Volume, “I really thought I should put my foot down and receive money for it.” But last week, after a nearly decade-long legal battle and Basil claiming that she never profited from the single, the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the now 78-year-old artist is the sole owner of the recording copyright for “Mickey” and Word of Mouth. Show, Viva Las Vegas, the Monkees’ Head movie, and American Graffiti acted in Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces choreographed David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour and Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” and “Crosseyed & Painless” music videos and founded/managed the pioneering street-dance troupe the Lockers (who actually once toured with Frank Sinatra). By the time the ‘80s and her Devo-assisted debut album Word of Mouth came along, she’d danced and/or choreographed for Shindig!, The T.A.M.I. The daughter of a vaudevillian acrobat/comedienne and a Vegas orchestra leader, Antonia Basilotta had literally grown up watching the likes of Nat King Cole, Josephine Baker, Judy Garland, and Frank Sinatra from the stage wings of the Sahara Hotel in the ‘50s and ‘60s. in May 1982, and in many ways the song was just a blip on her dizzyingly lengthy résumé. Toni Basil was already a 38-year-old showbiz veteran when her bouncy hit “Mickey” was released in the U.S. Toni Basil, American dancer turned singer, in Britain to perform her single 'Mickey' on Top of the Pops (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)
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