Sainte-Marie played piano and guitar, self-taught, in her childhood and teen years. In college some of her songs, "Ananias", the Indian lament, "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" and "Mayoo Sto Hoon" (in
Hindi) were already in her repertoire.
By 1962, in her early twenties, Sainte-Marie was touring alone, developing her craft and performing in various
concert halls,
folk festivals and Native
reservations across the
U.S, Canada and abroad. She spent a considerable amount of time in the coffeehouses of downtown
Toronto's old
Yorkville district, and
New York City's
Greenwich Village as part of the early to mid-1960s folk scene, often alongside other emerging Canadian contemporaries, such as
Leonard Cohen,
Joni Mitchell (including introducing her to manager Eliot Roberts), and
Neil Young.
She quickly earned a reputation as a gifted
songwriter, and many of her earliest
songs were
covered, and often turned into
hits, by other
artists, including
Chet Atkins,
Janis Joplin,
Taj Mahal and others. One of her most popular songs, "Until It's Time for You to Go", has been recorded by artists as diverse as
Elvis Presley,
Barbra Streisand,
Neil Diamond,
Arthur Fiedler and the
Boston Pops Orchestra,
Roberta Flack,
Cher, and
Bobby Darin, while "Piney Wood Hills" was made into a
country hit by
Bobby Bare.
In 1963, recovering from a throat infection Sainte-Marie became addicted to
codeine and recovering from the experience became the basis of her song "Cod'ine", later covered by
Quicksilver Messenger Service. Also in 1963 Sainte-Marie witnessed wounded soldiers returning from Vietnam at a time when the U.S. government was denying involvement - this inspired her
protest song "
Universal Soldier" which was released on her debut album,
It’s My Way on
Vanguard Records in 1964, and later became a hit for
Donovan. She was subsequently named
Billboard Magazine's Best New Artist.
In 1967, Sainte-Marie released the
album Fire and Fleet and Candlelight, which contained her interpretation of the traditional song "
Lyke Wake Dirge" and the hit "Now That the Buffalo's Gone", a protest over broken treaties with
First Nations people. Sainte-Marie's other well-known songs include "Mister Can't You See," (a
Top 40 U.S. hit in 1972); "He's an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo"; and the theme song of the popular movie "
Soldier Blue". Perhaps her first appearance on TV was as herself on
To Tell the Truth in January 1966.. She also appeared on
Pete Seeger's
Rainbow Quest with Pete Seeger in 1965 and several Canadian Television productions from the
1960s through to the
1990s
In the late sixties, Sainte-Marie used a
Buchla synthesizer to record the album
Illuminations, which did not receive much notice. "People were more in love with the
Pocahontas-with-a-guitar image," she commented in a 1998 interview.
She sang the opening song "The Circle Game" (written by
Joni Mitchell as performed by Sainte-Marie) in Stuart Hagmann's 1970 film "
The Strawberry Statement". Sainte-Marie regularly appeared on the children's TV series
Sesame Street over a five year period from 1976 - 1981, along with her first son, Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild whom she breast fed in one episode. She also began using
Apple Inc. Apple II and
Macintosh computers as early as 1981 to record her music and later some of her visual art.
The song "Up Where We Belong" (which Sainte-Marie co-wrote with
Will Jennings and musician
Jack Nitzsche) was performed by
Joe Cocker and
Jennifer Warnes for the film
An Officer and a Gentleman. It received the
Academy Award for
Best Song in 1982. The song was later covered by
Cliff Richard and
Anne Murray on Cliff's album of duets,
Two's Company.
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