b. Charlyn Marie Marshall, 21 January 1972, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Cat Power is the recording moniker of US singer-songwriter Charlyn Marshall. Her parents divorced soon after their daughter was born, resulting in Marshall spending an itinerant childhood in the American south, some of which time was spent with her father, a jobbing blues pianist. The newly-named Chan Marshall began performing with friends as Cat Power. She relocated to New York where she issued 1993's "Headlights" single on God Is My Co-Pilot's The Making Of Americans label. Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley and Two Dollar Guitar's Tim Foljahn offered to record with her after they saw her opening for Liz Phair. The trio recorded two raw indie rock albums in one day in December 1994, which were subsequently released in October 1995 on Italian label Runt (Dear Sir) and March 1996 on Shelley's Smells Like Records (Myra Lee). The latter was named after Marshall's mother.
Marshall signed to Matador Records for What Would The Community Think, an album which managed to fashion a more suitable musical backing for her highly personal lyrics, and included the stand-out track "Nude As The News". After a brief "retirement" from the music industry, she returned in 1998 with Moon Pix, recorded in Australia with backing provided by Mick Turner and Jim White of the Dirty Three. Turner's subtle guitar work and White's restrained percussion were a marked improvement on the overbearing rock accompaniment that made Cat Power's early records difficult to love. Her vocals demonstrated a new maturity on stand-out tracks such as "Cross Bones Style", "Say" and "He Turns Down", and a superb reading of the traditional "Moonshiner". The follow-up was a sparse solo recording comprising radical reworkings of material such as the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", Nina Simone's "Wild Is The Wind", and Moby Grape's "Naked, If I Want To". The album also included a completely revamped version of her own "In This Hole", which originally appeared on What Would The Community Think.
Marshall's first album of original material in over five years, the eclectic but thematically tight You Are Free, was released in February 2003. The following year she was filmed by experimental filmmaker Mark Borthwick for a special CD/DVD package, the focus of which was a two-hour solo performance in the middle of a forest. Her next album, the misleadingly titled The Greatest, was recorded with some of the Ardent Studios players who worked with soul legend Al Green in the early 70s. Released at the start of 2006, the album was praised as Marshall's most accessible and polished collection of material since the mid-90s. Just when it appeared that she might make the crossover to mainstream acceptance, Marshall was forced to cancel her American tour because of health issues. She resumed playing live in April and also made several guest appearances during this period, singing on albums by Yoko Ono, Faithless and El-P.
In 2007, Marshall became the first female winner of the prestigious Shortlist Music Prize. During this year she also recorded several sessions with her new backing group, the Dirty Delta Blues Band.
