Rita Abrams

Rita Abrams is an American performer, songwriter, and writer born on August 30, 1943, in Cleveland, Ohio. She attended Cleveland Heights High School and pursued classical piano and music theory at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her college education took her to Cincinnati and then to Simmons College in Boston before she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from the University of Michigan. Boston University awarded her a fellowship for a Masters Program in Special Education, and she subsequently taught for two years in Boston, where she also began writing verse and song lyrics and performed with an all-girl rock and roll group called the Three Faces of Eve.

Abrams appeared on Broadway between 1967 and 1972, with credits including George M!, Cabaret, and the musical No, No, Nanette. In 1968, she relocated to California and took a teaching position at Strawberry Point Elementary School in Mill Valley. On Christmas Day 1969, she composed a song about the town intended for her kindergarten class. Record producer Erik Jacobsen heard the song and recorded Abrams alongside the school's third-grade students, bringing the result to Warner Bros. Records. Released in June 1970 on the Reprise label under the name Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point Fourth Grade Class, the record reached number 90 on the Billboard pop chart and number 5 on the Easy Listening chart, and received a Grammy nomination. Promotional photographs of the performers were taken by Annie Leibovitz, and a Fourth of July performance in Mill Valley was filmed by Francis Ford Coppola. Abrams appeared on several nationally televised programs and in national magazines during this period. The follow-up single, "Buildin' a Heaven on Earth," was written by singer-songwriter Norman Greenbaum. Abrams, Jacobsen, and the children subsequently recorded and released a full album, titled Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point 4th Grade Class, on Reprise in 1972.

Following the success of "Mill Valley," Abrams left teaching to focus on music and writing. Her subsequent work included children's records, novelty songs, commercials, and greeting cards, many created in collaboration with Dr. Elmo, also known as Elmo Shropshire. In 1980, she received a national Emmy Award for writing the music for I Want It All Now, an NBC documentary about life in Marin County, California. A regional Emmy followed in 1992 for Classic Stories for Children. In 1981, she published a book titled At Your Age You're Having a What? The Advantages of Middle-Aged Motherhood. She also created a Las Vegas musical revue based on John Gray's book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, as well as a show about Marin County life titled For Whom the Bridge Tolls. Abrams remained a resident of Mill Valley until at least 2014.