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The Original Flower Child & Trailblazing Artist Melanie’s Final Gift Out Today Via Cleopatra Records

The Original Flower Child & Trailblazing Artist Melanie’s Final Gift Out Today Via Cleopatra Records

 Lullabies From Heaven - Unearthed Recordings Of Classic Lullabies and Original Songs By Melanie Date Back to the Mid-1960s, With New Contributions From Three Generations Of Her Family

 

Listen here: https://orcd.co/melanie_lullabiesfromheaven

 

April 25, 2025 – Melanie, the beloved and trailblazing artist who made history as the first solo performer to have three singles simultaneously on the Billboard chart, and known for her songs including 1971’s “Brand New Key,” her appearance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and an extensive catalog of works released throughout an uncompromising five-decade career, had always wanted to release an album of children’s songs.

Today, Lullabies From Heaven - a new album decades in the making and composed of previously unreleased recordings, is released on Cleopatra Records. With songs that Melanie recorded dating back to the mid-1960s, and only first discovered after her passing in 2024, this collection of lullabies is a revelation and an opportunity to revisit the career of a pioneering artist. Her three children, also musicians, along with grandchildren and great grandchildren, lent their voices and additional instruments to these recordings as a love letter and parting gift to her.

Melanie was beloved by her contemporaries and received prestigious performance invitations throughout her career from artists such as Jarvis Cocker and more. Of said performance, at the Meltdown festival at the Royal Festival Hall in London, The Independent proclaimed,” It was hard to disagree that Melanie has earned her place alongside Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Nico, and Marianne Faithfull in the pantheon of iconic female singers. Meltdown was all the better for her presence."

The Who’s Pete Townshend reflects, “I remember Melanie fondly. Our last meeting was in 1999 at Woodstock where we were both blown away by Joni Mitchell. Of course I remember her too from the Isle of White Festival in 1972. I think she and Keith Moon started a “thing” that didn’t blossom, but was joyful to watch. When Keith was romancing, he became a gentleman. Melanie was also following Meher Baba who I still follow.”

Drawn from unreleased recordings dating back to the mid-1960s, the album includes both familiar folk treasures and original Melanie compositions, woven together with new vocal contributions from her family. These are the songs she once sang beside their cribs — “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Teddy Bear’s Picnic,” “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” — melodies that became the soundtrack of her home, now passed down across generations in this poignant, intergenerational love letter.

“Momma was always such an inspiration and incredible craftswoman of songs,” says daughter Jeordie Schekeryk. “All these songs have had a unique place in our hearts — and especially now. We are excited to share these with everyone… from our family to yours.”

“There were so many little magical moments,” adds daughter Leilah Schekeryk. “I really felt Mom’s spirit with us. Just truly special!!”

The album’s previews — including a rendition of “Puff the magic Dragon” - complete with its very own animated video - and “Ring Around the Moon” have already offered a glimpse into the warmth and intimacy of the full collection. The latter reimagines Melanie’s beloved 1971 Gather Me track as a lullaby, featuring Leilah and her daughters, alongside her son Beau Jarred’s delicate guitar work.

“It’s a gift,” says Beau. “I remember Mom singing my sisters and me to sleep with ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic.’ I’m beyond glad we got to do that one for her.”

Among the album’s standouts is a newly released version of “Alexander Beetle,” a Melanie fan favorite adapted from an A.A. Milne poem. Originally recorded in the 1960s and later performed live on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1971, the track now appears in two versions—including a never-before-heard bonus take from the ’70s.

Cleopatra Records has reissued nearly 30 albums featuring Melanie’s works over the past year; her catalog had never previously been available all at one time. This includes every album between 1972 and her final release in 2015, as well as music that she had recorded as recently as 2022.  

Stay tuned for much more to come from Melanie in 2025.

Listen to Lullabies From Heaven HERE

 

 
 

Photo Courtesy of Cleopatra Records

Track List - Lullabies From Heaven:

  1. Alexander Beetle
  2. Puff The Magic Dragon
  3. Animal Crackers
  4. Hobo’s Lullaby 
  5. Skinny Bone Jones
  6. Teddy Bear’s Picnic
  7. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
  8. The Riddle Song (Child 46)
  9. Rain Rain Go Away Medley
  10. Garden In The City
  11. Ring Around The Moon
  12. Fly Me To The Moon
  13. Duck Bottom Boat
  14. Alexander Beetle (Reprise)

About:

Melanie Anne Safka Schekeryk (February 3, 1947 – January 23, 2024)

Melanie - she has always been known by her first name alone - needs no introduction.

An unexpected star of the Woodstock Festival in 1969, Melanie was the first rocker (and, in some instances, the first woman) to perform at the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall; the first solo performer to have three simultaneous singles on the Billboard chart; the first, too, to launch her own record label; a major hit at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, and the artist selected to welcome the rising midsummer sun at the 1971 Glastonbury Festival.

 She dominated British, American and European music press readers polls during 1971-1972, and her music has been covered by acts as far apart as Morrissey, Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand and Dolly Parton.  

 Other admirers include Keith Richard and the Rolling Stones, who invited her to open their 1976 European tour; Jarvis Cocker, who persuaded her to perform at the 2007 Meltdown Festival; Morrissey; Miley Cyrus;  and Jim Morrison.  “Jim and I were going to do a rock version of Othello at Madison Square Garden,” she recalls. “I backed out – call me crazy.”

 More than that, however, Melanie epitomized the “flower child” imagery of the late 1960s and early 1970s, at the same time as writing songs that tore apart the societal conventions of the day regarding what a young woman (she was barely 20 at the time) should say, think, or do.

 This dichotomy continued for the remainder of her career, and the forty plus albums she released before her passing on January 23, 2024.  For some listeners, she remains the devastatingly beautiful “hippy chick” who sang songs about beetles, Christopher Robin, love, peace and candles in the rain. Her biggest British hit, “Brand New Key,” is remembered as “the bicycle song,” and was later covered by the Wurzels as “Brand New Combine Harvester.” Another Melanie classic, “Look What They’ve Done To My Song, Ma” gave the New Seekers their first hit single in 1970.

 For others, however, she is remembered for “Bo Bo’s Party,” about a woman haunting the back room at parties, in search of the attention her impotent husband cannot provide; for songs of darkness and despair; for ripping the sticking plaster off the festering wounds of Vietnam-era America.  And for fighting - not always successfully, but resolutely regardless - against the engrained attitudes of the male dominated music industry of the age. A single line in “Brand New Key” encapsulates her fury - “some people say I’ve done alright for a girl.”

 Her first battle, aged just 20, was with Clive Davis, the legendary (and legendarily combative) head of Columbia records. When he refused to countenance her first LP until she accepted his “guidance” on how she should present herself, she walked off the label.

 Other industry kingpins, too, tried to shape and mold her, and they too lost the battle - Buddah (and later Casablanca) Records chief Neil Bogart, Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, Clive Davis again at Arista.  And, though she was warned, again and again, that her single-mindedness was losing her more friends than she was winning, she didn’t care.  This was her career, and it was going to follow the course that she designed, come what may.

She continued to do so for the remainder of her life.

Today, Melanie’s career is enjoying the spotlight once more.  Across the year or so before her death, Melanie and manager Dave Thompson, worked together to create what they considered the ultimate Melanie collection - deluxe reissues of her entire album catalog, plus a series of additional releases spotlighting crucial live performances and unreleased studio sessions. The first of these was released by Cleopatra Records in early January 2024, just weeks before her death. Since that time, 30 more albums have shed new light upon, and opened fresh ears to, her music and career, while a six CD box set, Neighbourhood Songs (Easy Action Records) dug deep into Melanie’s broadcast and concert archive.

Melanie might be gone, but she is also here to stay.