Cyndi Grecco was never a household name. Her voice, however, was well-known, playing on ABC every week for eight years and for years in syndication afterwards.
You see, Cyndi Grecco was the vocalist featured on a theme song for a television show called Laverne & Shirley. A spinoff from Happy Days, it was a midseason replacement show in early 1976, Originally called Laverne Defazio & Shirley Feeney (that title was quickly shortened), the show made stars of Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall.
And this iconic opening made the theme song immediately recognizable, and brought the terms "schlemiel" and "schlimazel" into the vernacular. Both are Yiddish terms referring to a chronically unlucky person, and can be best defined with the sentence "the schlemiel spills his soup on the schlimazel."
Of course, as soon as the show came out and the theme was inserted into the American consciousness, everyone was requesting the song from their local radio stations, and so it was released as a single in 1976. It became a top 30 hit in the US and Canada.
Despite her flash fame, Cyndi Grecco has not charted again since this song. Subsequent attempts failed to chart. Perhaps it's because this song was so earnest and inspiring - and still is.
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