With Labor Day coming, we got to thinking about that often critical, sometimes comical first job we’ve all had—and sometimes had to endure. We asked a few locals who’ve journeyed on their own interesting career paths what that first step/job was like. As a member of the Waters Family singers, Maxine Waters-Andrews has enjoyed an incredible career that has seen her record some of the most iconic songs, albums and soundtracks with some of the most iconic talents: Phil Spector to Michael Jackson to Adele with so, so many—Patti La Belle, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, Guns and Roses, Whitney Houston…—in between. Maxine is married to Long Beach Vice Mayor Dee Andrews.
Before the 260 gold and more than 100 platinum albums she sang on, before the 50 years touring with Neil Diamond, before her inclusion in the Academy Award-winning documentary “20 Feet From Stardom,” Maxine Waters-Andrews was an overachieving teenager looking for something to do with her summer vacation.
“I always went to summer school just to go, you know, so I could get credits ahead for the next semester,” she said. “But I had collected so many credits at that point, I wanted to try something different. I wanted to get a job.”
It was 1962, and Maxine found that job at Mattel Toys in El Segundo.
“I worked on the assembly line snapping this little cover onto the backs of these toy fire trucks.”
Maxine says she liked the work, enjoyed talking and singing and generally entertaining the other people on the line. In fact, she says she enjoyed it right up until the end of her first week; when they fired her.
“At the end of my first week, the supervisor came by and said ‘I want to see you in my office.’ I said ‘Oh, OK.’ That’s when they told me. They said the conveyor belt was backing up with fire trucks because I talked to everyone and I was singing all the time.”
Singing is not second nature to a member of the Waters family; it is their nature. Descended from a long line of musicians—”My grandpa played piano in honky tonks,”—the kids could all read music and play instruments by the time they reached their teens. Singing to Maxine was no different than talking, though, in the opinion of Mattel Toys management, she did a bit too much of both.
“Oh, they were very nice about it. They gave me my $5 and sent me on my way.”
In two years, that way was into a studio with Phil Spector and the Righteous Brothers to record backup vocals with her family on a little track called “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin.'” And the rest …
“It was a lot of fun, there was all this talent around. Darlene Love and Ronnie Spector and Sonny and Cher, though back then, he was just Sonny and she was just Cher, they weren’t together,” Maxine said. “I didn’t think this would be a career. Phil would just pay us hourly, cash. I liked working for him. He was weird, but I liked working for him.”
The Waters family—Maxine, Julia, Luther and Oren—would go on to work with virtually every kind of artist, in virtually every kind of style for virtually every kind of medium. Just consider this ridiculous stat: they were part of the biggest selling album of all time (Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”), the biggest selling soundtrack (Whitney Houston’s “The Body Guard”) and the most played record in radio history (The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”).
Maxine says she is semi-retired now from a near-60 year career that has seen her travel to six continents and 197 countries, a good deal of that as a backup singer with sister Julia to Neil Diamond for 50 years. Still, she says she hasn’t stopped altogether.
“We just did some work with Ringo Starr on his new album,” she said. “Trust me, it is hot!”
She says if Neil were to call tomorrow and say he was going back on the road, she would seriously consider heading out with him. She likes to work, she says, just as long as it’s her kind of work.
“Oh, I never held anything against [Mattel]. I was just doing what came naturally to me. I never felt bad about getting fired. In the end, I think it worked out best for everybody.”
