Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr. - Original 5th Dimensions in Up, Up & Away! A Musical Fable

Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., are the 7-time Grammy Award-winning duo, known as “The First Couple of Pop & Soul.” Marilyn began her career singing with Ray Charles, and Billy in churches, choirs and artist management, including Anna Mae Bullock, who became Tina Turner. 

Marilyn & Billy have been married for 51 years, and they launched the career of the original 5th Dimension as lead singers and co-founders of the legendary group. Their Pop/Soul classics include “You Don’t Have To Be A Star (To Be In My Show,” “Up, Up And Away,” (Grammy Hall of Fame, 2004) “Aquarius / Let The Sunshine In,” (Grammy Hall of Fame, 2003) “Worst That Could Happen,” “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Sweet Blindness,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” and “One Less Bell To Answer.” While with The 5th Dimension, and after leaving the quintet, Marilyn & Billy paved the way for countless artists, and made history for the African American community, when The Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr. Show on CBS became the first and only, to date, television series to star a Black married couple.

Marilyn & Billy’s activism began in the segregated 1960s and continues with the release of their most recent CD, Blackbird: Lennon-McCartney Icons, “a plea for social justice that everyone deserves.” It was released during Black History Month in 2021 and produced during COVID and was an important statement during the period of National unrest in our country. They wanted to use their platform powerfully for “Civil Rights, which are Human Rights…Fannie Lou Hammer famously said, ‘none of us is free, until all of us are free.'”