MARIAH'S YOUTH
Mariah Carey was born March 27, 1970, on Long Island, New York.
Mariah was the third of three children born to Patricia Hickey and Alfred Roy Carey. Patricia
and Alfred already had a son, Morgan, and a daughter, Alison. Mariah's heritage is a mix of
races. Her mother is Irish and her father African-American and Venezuelan. Her parents divorced
when she was just three - and while she stayed in touch with her father for some time afterwards
communication between them was far from straightforward. Mariah already had her role model and,
even at this tender age, was certain she wanted to be like Mom.
Her unusual name had musical connotations, too: the Oscar-nominated musical "Paint Your Wagon"
by Lerner and Loewe featured the song "The Call The Wind Mariah". And fate decreed that another
song from that show, "I Was Born Under A Wandrin' Star" by Lee Marvin was at Number 1 (if only
in Britain) on the very day she was born.
She'd follow her long-suffering mother round the house, parroting back the tunes she heard from
the radio or even the television commercials. She was soaking up influences like a sponge, and
healthy doses of her mother's favourite soul singers like Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder only
added to her musical education. Also on the Carey turntable during the early 1970s was Minnie
Riperton, a gifted singer who's since succumbed to cancer but whose 1975 hit "Loving You"
demonstrated the kind of coloratura vocal effects Mariah would incorporate into her own
distinctive style a decade and a half later.
With sister Alison and brother Morgan ten and nine years older than her, and Patricia working
nights as a singer, Mariah knew early on what is was like to be home alone. "I'd just do
whatever I wanted," she now recalls of these part exciting, part frightening times. "Eat all
the icing out of jars by the spoonful, watch whatever I wanted on TV." Yet she recognises it
forced her to grow up quickly, depsite those sweet, elfin looks. "I think it made me what I am,
in a strange sort of way - because I was independent." School would prove a problem because, as
she says, "I found it har to accept rules and regulations because I knew how to look after
myself already. I've always been like a grown-up... Mom would say I was six going on 35."
But underneath that supposedly confident exterior lurked a troubled child. She bore the mental
scars of the racial prejudice her family had encountered - but it had been Alison, both the
oldest and the darkest-skinned of the three children, who found herself with the heaviest burden.
"They'd shout racial slurs at her and beat her up," Mariah later recalled. "Then my brother would
go in and fight for her, even though he was handicapped. It was tough." Poisoned pets and damaged
cars were further problems the Careys would encounter in a decade where mixed marriages were not
nearly as common as they are now, nor attitudes as enlightened.
As Mariah has mentioned, her brother had faced a physical handicap in the shape of mild cerebral
palsy and epilepsy, but had overcome this considerable blow - along with one leg an inch shorter
than the other - to live a relatively normal life. His determination served as a constant
inspiration to his younger sister who, until her secret love was revealed, credited him as "the
only man in my life". He, in turn, was supportive of her single-minded pursuit of singing
stardom.
Indeed, it was his contacts which first saw Mariah's voice committed to recording tape. A
Manhattan group with access to studio equipment enlisted her as a backing singer as they cut
innumerable demos to hawk round the record companies in a vain search for that all-important
big break.
That never came... but the arrangement continued for many months as Mariah continued to show up
at school bleary-eyed. No-one, either pupils or teachers, would share her dream, so after a
while she didn't even bother explaining. No tears were shed on either side when she graduated,
though the alternative - waitress work or checking coats - was hardly pleasurable.
Mariah would find herself burning the proverbial candle at both ends by taking the subway
crosstown from Long Island, having changed out of her school attire, then travelling back as
dawn broke to snatch a few fitful hours of sleep before her long-suffering mother shook her
awake once more. This had few long-term benefits, except the fact that, when Patricia woke her
sleeping beauty daughter, she was greeted by little more than a squeak, so hard had she worked
her vocal cords the night before. This distressed Mariah to the extend that she consciously
worked to strengthen those vocal muscles, and this helped give her the seven-octave range she
enjoys today. "I've always sung to myself as a little girl," she says, "and it's like a
friend."
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