Ruth McCartney

Ruth McCartney (born Ruth Williams, 15 February 1960) is an Internet, digital and new media entrepreneur and is the CEO of McCartneyMultimedia, co-founder of fan management software company iFanz and President of ConnectCode.mobi. She is the stepsister of Paul McCartney and Mike McCartney.

Early life

McCartney was born in Walton Hospital, Liverpool. She began to study guitar, singing and dance at age four, adding piano lessons at age seven and guitar at age 12 at West Kirby Grammar School for Girls on the Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside.

Jim McCartney married widow Angela Williams—Ruth's mother—after only three meetings, on 24 November 1964. Jim was 62 and Angie was 34.[1]

Ruth studied stagecraft, writing, television production and dance at the North West Stage School.

Career

Performing and songwriting

She performed live shows, most of which were in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Noyabirsk, Salehkard, Yerevan (Armenia), Turkmenistan and 8 different cities in Siberia, Russia. Ruth became popular there from appearances on Russian television and in Armenia in 1989. During that time the ruble was not an exchangeable currency and consequently she donated the proceeds of her first 3 tours to various Soviet charities including the children of Spitak, Armenia who were devastated by the earthquake of 1988. She personally experienced a similar trauma in California 6 years later.

With Dave Skinner she penned a song for Tina Cross entitled "New Blood" that was released on Festival Records and reached No. 11 on the Australian charts. In 1983, Ruth relocated to Los Angeles and formed what was to become a long term writing partnership with Barry Coffing, BMI award winner for co-writing "How do you talk to an Angel?", theme tune from Aaron Spelling's series "The Heights". Together, Ruth and Barry wrote "Cigarette in the Rain" for Randy Crawford's WB LP Rich and Poor.

Randy chose this song as the 3rd single from the album and it rose to No. 32 on Billboard's R&B chart, selling more than 600,000 copies worldwide and earning gold status in South Africa, Scandinavia and Italy. Ruth and Barry collaborated on other titles that were included in feature films such as Mystic Pizza, Midnight Crossing, Police Academy 5, Party Line, Deadly Intentions and The Girl Gets Moe.

During the 1980s in Hollywood, Ruth worked behind the scenes in productions of commercials, motion pictures, music videos and public service announcements. On one shoot in Baker, CA she met German gaffer Dieter Bockmeier. They married, moved to Munich and 1990/91 Ruth was based in Germany writing songs for her debut album on Ralph Siegel's Munich-based Jupiter/ BMG Records, with producer and writing partner Andi Slavik.

Together they traveled to London, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hollywood to complete tracks on Ruth's LP I Will Always Remember You. The album was released in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, S. Korea, S. Vietnam, Turkey, Russia and the Philippines.

During her time in Germany, Ruth met Grammy Award winner Harold Faltermeyer and producer/publisher Joerg Evers. With Harold she wrote the theme tune for the 1992 Summer Olympics, commissioned by German TV network ZDF, entitled "Forever Human".

The song was released Europe-wide by BMG and featured on 14 different compilations as well as receiving daily airplay during the games. With Joerg, she and Martin Nethercutt penned "Diva in Disguise" for Margot Werner for her 1996 season. Ruth and Dieter divorced but remained close friends.

Harold then invited Ruth to co-write for Chaya. The first single, "I Feel My Heart is Burning", received, according to Billboard magazine, "massive airplay" and entered the Musikmarkt chart at No. 67. The second single "Hot Shot Lover", co-written with husband Martin Nethercutt, was released in 1993.

Russia

Her 1997 tour of Russia was Ruth's 8th since 1989. During this trip she was the subject and co-producer of a documentary for Russian National Television which has some 300 million viewers. It is the only network that reaches all 11 time zones of the country plus parts of the former "East Bloc", Cuba and China. The documentary, entitled Picture of Ruth aired nationwide in January 1998.

In Moscow, Ruth starred as herself in 2 episodes of Russia's most popular soap opera. She began recording a Russian Language project for EMI/Gala Records. She has taken turn of the century Russian poetry and set it to a contemporary dance groove with the help of Vladimir Musikant. The lyrics for her first single, "Lyubiminya Prosta" ... "Love Me Simply", was written over a hundred years ago by legendary Russian poet Fyodor Salagup.

The rest of the trip consisted of staging concerts in the remote towns and cities of middle Siberia. She travelled daily by helicopter (the only possibility), to reach such venues as Nizhnivartovsk, Yurai, Sovietski, Noyabirsk, Yugorski, Beriozova, Khanti Mansi (home of the last of Siberia's native Eskimos), and Salehard on the Arctic Circle where temperatures reached −56 °C (−69 °F).

Ruth again returned to Moscow to co-produce and shoot a music video for a self-penned title "Russian Nights" which was nominated for Russian MTV's "Video of the Year".

McCartney Multimedia

In 1995, after moving to Tennessee following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Martin and mother Angie McCartney founded McCartney Multimedia Inc in Nashville. As the CEO, Ruth produced the online presence, including streaming video, websites, and presentation of many clients including John Cleese, Clint Black, LeAnn Rimes, Roseanne Barr, Steve Tyrell, Corbin Bleu, Richie Sambora, Kenny G, Macy Gray, Edgar Winter, Oleta Adams, and REO Speedwagon. The company's technology iFanz.com manages the databases of stars from Paula Abdul to Fleetwood Mac and Iron Chef Cat Cora. The John Cleese project involved production of dozens of video rants, archive commercials and Monty Python clips and co-ordination of fan databases into a cohesive whole in the iFanz system. She co-developed iFanz as an eCRM/fan management platform and as a predecessor to Constant Contact. It was the first of its kind and was released in 1998.

Currently the trio run the firm[2] McCartney Multimedia, Inc. from Playa del Rey. They opened a branch in Vienna, Austria in September 2013 to focus on touring, sports management, marketing and innovations. On October 12, 2013, Ruth emceed a 2-hour musical and multimedia show featuring McCartney historical family archival photos and behind-the-songs stories called The Magical History Tour[3] featuring interviews with Angie and Beatles tribute band The Mop Tops. The show was the opener of the annual Good Life Festival held at Encanterra in San Tan Valley, AZ. On March 21, the show was performed at the Wild Horse Pass Casino in Gilbert, AZ. The show played the Passionspielhaus in Thiersee, Austria with The Cavern Club Beatles in 2014. Proceeds from the show raised money for The Linda McCartney Centre, a breast cancer research and treatment facility in Liverpool.[4][5][6][7][8] More events took place in Austria in March and April 2015, including one at Obertauern, where The Beatles filmed the ski scenes for Help!

Appearances

McCartney was a judge for the Arizona leg of American Idol for Fox Television; she has appeared as a speaker at various Beatles fan conventions in Chicago, New York, Kansas City, Toronto and Los Angeles.

In 2011 and 2012 Ruth emceed at the annual Fund Raiser for the Rialto Unified School District's annual "Puttin' On The Ritz" Gala. R Entertainment hired Ruth and Angie to present a live cooking demonstration in Scottsdale, Arizona for its New Year's Eve street party, where she made Shepherd's Pie. In July 2011, Ruth emceed the opening night of the Levitt Pavilions Free Summer Concert Series in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.

In January 2013, she returned from Liverpool and London, where she narrated and co-produced a retrospective Beatles documentary entitled Here, There and Everywhere with Atlanta-based cameraman/director Ken Barker. The footage features rare interviews with Cynthia Lennon, Neil Innes of Rutles fame, Bob Wooler (the original Cavern DeeJay), The Fourmost's Billy Hatton, George Harrison's sister Louise and more.

Public speaking

in 2009, Arizona State University engaged Ruth to speak on e-marketing and demographics. In 2010 Intel engaged Ruth to speak to an elite group in San Jose regarding "Know Thy Customer". She spoke at MusExpo.net's West Hollywood convention in April 2010.

Ruth speaks on topics ranging from corporate governance in the Social Media Age to "Know Thy Customer" and the current implications of online community development to "Art & The Beatles". In August 2011 she was the keynote speaker at the American Accounting Association Annual Meeting in Denver, CO and in March 2012 was the featured speaker at The Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond, VA. On April 4 in St. Petersburg Florida, and April 25 in Salt Lake City, UT 2014 Ruth was the plenary speaker on the subject of "Big Data" for the American Accounting Association's Eastern and Western Regional meetings. She was contracted to speak for them again on the subject of technology and accounting in October 2014 in Minneapolis, MN and Albany, NY. There are more engagements with this group lined up for 2015.

Notes

  1. ↑ Harry 2001.
  2. ↑ "McCartney Multimedia". McCartney Multimedia. Retrieved 2016-01-21.
  3. ↑ "The Magical History Tour". Mccartneymultimedia.com. Retrieved 2016-01-21.
  4. ↑
  5. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20131018033905/http://santanvalleytoday.com/pages/brit-invasion-oct-12-mccartneys-bring-magical-history-tour-to-san-tan-valley/. Archived from the original on 18 October 2013. Retrieved 17 October 2013. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. ↑ "Beatles Magic in the San Tan Valley – Photos". Azcentral.com. Retrieved 2016-01-21.
  7. ↑ FOX (2015-07-21). "Video | KSAZ". Myfoxphoenix.com. Retrieved 2016-01-21.
  8. ↑ Terrill, Marshall (2014-03-21). "McCartneys swing through Chandler on 'Magical History Tour' – East Valley Tribune: Performance". East Valley Tribune. Retrieved 2016-01-21.

References

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