Melanie Rosales: She’s got the music in her
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-Submitted photo
Melanie Rosales plays her guitar. Her childhood love of music led to a singing career.
-Submitted photo
Melanie Rosales plays her guitar. Her childhood love of music led to a singing career.
The Kiki Dee Band may not have known of Melanie Rosales when it sang “I’ve Got the Music in Me,” but its 1974 hit song could have well been written just for her.
When she was growing up in Kalo, a small town between Otho and Coalville, “My parents always had music going in the house – all kinds,” recalled Rosales. “Dad had Mexican stuff going, mom was into country, rock, Broadway. I knew I was obsessed by the age of 4 or 5.
“I was born with a good ear, an open musical mind, and God-given pitch. Pitch is the gift. The rest can be learned and practiced. Never ever wanted to do anything else! It never occurred to me. Whether a blessing or a curse, when I graduated from high school, I just knew I was going to be singing. It was not even an issue.”
Like a verse from the song says:
Some say that life is a circle
But that ain’t the way that I found it
Gonna move in a straight line
Keeping my feet firmly on the ground
Rosales’ “straight line” took her from Fort Dodge to Minneapolis, where during the 1980s and 1990s she sang with many of the bands that did the real ‘hard gig” work of the Minneapolis rock and blues scene, including the Doug Maynard Band, T C Jammers, Lamont Cranston and Lipps Inc. of “Funkytown” fame. Rosales said she and her close group of friends – writers, players and singers – formed the core of each of these bands.
In the process she earned four Minnesota Music Awards for Best Female Vocalist. In 1984 she had a Billboard Dance Chart leading single “Addicted to the Night”, with Lipps Inc. which then crossed over to the R & B charts. In 1985, her single “What You Really Want” written by Jerry Williams, was one of the Billboard top picks.
Singing with the T C Jammers, she took part in a Department of Defense tour for servicemen and servicewomen in Europe and the Azores. Rosales sang many musical jingles for companies that included Dillards, Great Clips, Hormel, Taco Bell, Land O’ Lakes, Phillips 66, McDonalds, SuperAmerica and Arby’s.
Today, she and her husband Charles “Charlie” Underbrink – a fellow member of the Fort Dodge Senior High Class of 1973 (“he was the basketball star, I was the band geek”) – split their time between homes in Park City, Utah, and Crosslake, Minnesota. Their daughter Piper Underbrink, 30, is a winemaker and viticulturist who owns Prive Vineyard and Winery in Newberg, Oregon. She is engaged to be married next August.
And the music – well it’s still in her.
“I sing in the summer, I do at least a couple jobs every summer,” Rosales said. “There’s a really nice show venue called Crooners in Minneapolis, it’s like the old supper clubs. I did one country show with Men of Country, doing some of Loretta Lynn’s stuff, for a couple nights last summer in Minneapolis. They’re just enough to see my old friends, rehearse, laugh, carry on, and pretend like I’m 20 again.”
Keith Brown, who said Rosales has been nominated to the Iowa Rock ‘N Roll Music Association Hall of Fame where, if elected, she would join him and others from Fort Dodge, is a longtime friend who was two years ahead of her at FDSH.
“Fort Dodge has produced many great singers, songwriters and musicians but at the very top, in rarified air is where you’ll find Melanie. She’s the ‘Jewel of Fort Dodge’,” he said. “Melanie has forged her path with determination, hard work and massive talent.
“When Bonnie Raitt performed in Minneapolis last year to a sold-out crowd, she stopped four times to tell the crowd how lucky they were to have Melanie in their city. Pretty good recommendation, I’d say.”
In the liner notes for Rosales’ first record, Raitt wrote: “I’ve loved Mel’s sexy, soulful voice for years and the range she’s shown on her new record of terrific songs just proves her depth. Her production chops just keep getting better.”
Rosales is the youngest daughter of Dolly and Ralph Rosales. Her dad, known as Rosy, operated Rosy’s Tire Service in the Crossroads Mall area. Her parents met after he returned from World War II.
“My dad was born in Coffeyville, Kansas., and came to Iowa because his dad, my grandfather, got a job working on the railway system in Fort Dodge,” Rosales said.
Her grandfather, Lorenzo Morales, immigrated to the United States from Mexico.
Her mother and father each came from families of seven. Three of her father’s sisters survive – Shirley Nelson and Fran Rosales of Fort Dodge and Angie Fair in California. The surviving member of her mother’s family is Dr. Larry Dunscombe of Humboldt.
Rosales and her two sisters, Vicki and Kristi, were born in Fort Dodge and grew up in Kalo. Her mother worked as a beautician and today, at 92, lives in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
“She’s into social media – Facebook, TikTok, Instagram – and is still driving.”
Rosales’ father died about eight years ago. Both of her sisters also live in Florida. Vicki is married to Larry Chase, who is from Otho, and they live in Rockledge with their sons Brett and Nathan. Kristi is married to Tim Abbott, who is also from Fort Dodge, and they live in Cocoa Beach with their son, Ian.
“Both of my sisters used to sing all the time, never professionally, but we always sang together and had fun! They both have great voices.”
“My parents were the most influential people in my career and musical path,” Rosales said. “They both equally fed my love of all types of music and never once uttered the dreaded … When will get a real job? I had started begging them for a piano around third grade and took lessons every week until I finished my senior year.”
Rosales began singing rock, country and blues when she was 8 years old and has been perfecting her own brand of hard-driving, soulful, contemporary R & B and country sound ever since. She was given a baritone ukulele when she was 10 and played it solo for weddings, funerals and other functions.
She started getting paid for performances when she joined the Fort Dodge band Dale and The DevonAires.
“Dad knew Dale Black and told him, my daughter sings, and lo and behold, I signed with them when I was 12. I would join them at a venue to sing a set of songs – one of them, ‘Stand by Your Man’. Lots of country. My dad would take me and stay there while I sang.”
One of her most memorable gigs came when she was asked to sing at a wedding near Gilmore City.
“I was 16, had a car, and got caught in a freakish Iowa snowstorm. I got as far as my aunt and uncle’s farm in Gilmore City. I got in the house and called to say I was stranded. ‘Stay right there, we know where the Niemeyer farm is,’ they told me. Soon a sheriff arrived in a snowmobile and took me and my guitar to the wedding.”
The family moved into Fort Dodge, to a home on South 15th Street, when Rosales was in the seventh grade. In high school, she sang in a jazz band, The Fort Dodge Big Band, with John Groethe and Ralph Drollinger. (Groethe taught instrumental music at FDSH and Drollinger taught music at Manson High School.) She took part in high school choruses, “but not a lot of theater stuff because I was always working on weekends. It was fun – with Dale, we’d sing all country, and with the jazz group, all jazz standards. I loved it all. I got to perform for Gail Niceswanger – I loved him as a director. Fort Dodge is not a huge town, it’s a working town, but it always had exceptional art and music instructors.”
Rosales attended Iowa Central Community College from 1973 to 1975. She sang alto as one of the 20 members of the Iowa Central Singers under J. Eugene McKinley and upon graduation, she was the soloist with the Easy Street band – composed of Neil Isaacson of Webster City, Rusty Larson of Eagle Grove and Kim Laird of Moline, Illinois.
“We did the Holiday Inn and Ramada Inn circuits, including Florida and up the coast, for the next two years,” she said. “I met Olivia Newton John’s bass player at a Holiday Inn in suburban Minneapolis and he told me, ‘You’re a good singer and you should think of moving to Minneapolis.’ So, I went up and auditioned – and immediately became a waitress. I worked at O’Connell’s Pub in St. Paul, owned by two brothers, and told them, ‘I’m really a singer.’ Finally, I joined a band and got some jobs. Then everything just started happening.
“Total steady work forever…bar work and bands, six nights a week, sometimes seven. I could not do it now. I started getting jingle work – I would sing jingles during the day, then sing with bands at night. I opened for Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, Taj Mahal many times, and I’ll never forget opening for Muddy Waters at the Union Bar in Minneapolis. It was just mind blowing.”
Although she has performed before audiences since she was 8 years old, Rosales said she still gets stage fright: “Always have, probably always will. My best friend, (Twin Cities performer) Bobby Vandell, once told me to get comfortable with your surroundings and stage for the night, look around, and BREATH! Breathing really really really works. It can calm your pounding heart. Can’t really sing with a pounding heart!”
She was performing at a Minneapolis bar when she “re-met” Charlie Underbrink, whom she had not seen since high school. The son of Earl Underbrink, once president of the First National Bank of Fort Dodge, he worked as an attorney at the time, later got into the investment business and is now a private investor.
“He came to see one of my shows and afterward, he said, ‘You remember me?’ and we started visiting,” she said. “We had both married at about the same time; his marriage went awry; my marriage went awry. We were just friends for another year before we started dating, when we were in our upper 30s.”
They were married Feb. 24, 1989, on a cruise ship, The Big Red Boat – “Married at sea while heading to the Bahamas surrounded by close family on both sides. It was a gas!”
Brown said he and his wife visited Melanie and Charlie at their Crosslake home last summer.
“We engaged in laughter, song and a taste of Charlie’s amazing bourbon catch,” he said. “Melanie engages in all musical styles, R&B, Rock, Country, Jazz with the same desire…to be the best and she always is. As Julie and I were preparing to leave, Stevie Nicks’ keyboardist Ricky Peterson was pulling in for the weekend…yep!…and he’s Melanie’s longtime friend.
“Minnesota loves to claim Melanie as their own, but Charlie and Melanie are truly ‘Iowa Nice’ and ‘Dodger Proud’!”
Asked what music means to her, Rosales replied: “EVERYTHING! Simply everything. It directed my life from the beginning. It can soothe a crying baby, silence a howling wolf, make people get up and move, provide comfort during deep sorrow, change attitudes, open minds, make you laugh! It’s very trite I know … but music truly is the universal language.it is the great UNITER!
“I hope I have been able to touch people throughout the years to bring moments of happiness to them with my music. I could never ever give back everything that music has given to me in my lifetime.”