When Marcia Hines first hit Australia in 1970, she was, famously, just 16 years old and as she tells me by phone from Perth, “bullet-proof, as all 16-year-olds should be.”

Now at 71, she’s coming to Canberra in a show based on her 2023 album, Still Shining: The 50th Anniversary Ultimate Collection.

A household name through stage shows such as Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, years of touring with the Daly-Wilson Big Band and a number two in the singles charts in Australia 1977, she was voted “Queen of Pop” from 1976 to 1978 and inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2007. These are just a few of her achievements since she decided to call Australia home.

Hines was initially “discovered” in her home town, Boston, by entrepreneur Harry M Miller and director Jim Sharman while they were looking for African-American singers to perform in a new season of the tribal rock love musical, Hair.

A singer in her church choir from age nine, for her, coming here was initially supposed to be part of the learning curve of a young singer. Her mum, whom she says “taught me all the good things, so I knew what was wrong and what was right,” asked: “Do you want to go for six months?”

We know how that turned out. Miller became her legal guardian until she was 21, she became a star on stage and a successful recording artist so as she says: “In the end, it worked out all right.”

When Hines arrived in Australia it was a time when finding a black singer here was a tall order, but, as the daughter of Jamaican parents, she was no ordinary black singer. 

“I brought my Jamaican heritage with me,” she says and that, she believes, has gifted her her a laid-back quality, though not so laid-back that she can’t react when she hears terrible stories coming out of the US recently.

“I still have both my passports, you know,” she says, “I just can’t believe what’s going on over there, I’m speechless.”

If she’s back in the US nowadays, people think she sounds totally Australian, but Hines tells me she never had a typical American accent, because she was taught how to speak English by a Jamaican woman.

Hines’ easy talking style is familiar to most Australians from her times as a judge on Australian Idol, where she has had the reputation of being exceptionally diplomatic.

“I was a kid once, I understand what these kids want to do so I want to be a constructive critic and give them something that they can take and work on,” she says. 

Hines has enjoyed several periods of extensive touring, as with this stint, which takes in WA, Queensland, SA, Victoria and NSW and although she’s slated to play the role of Teen Angel in the new John Frost/Crossroads production of Grease, life on the road still holds its attractions. 

“It’s great to be on the road, performing again,” she says.

“And it’s great to see people mouthing the words to your songs – it opens up experiences to people and gives them something to believe in.

“Yes, Still Shining is a huge tour, but this is part of my creativity. Back in the day with Russell Morris and Col Joye, we used to do rural gigs and we lived on the road, it’s part of the entertainment industry.”

But there’s plenty more to life for Hines.

“Something I’m loving is that I’ve become a great mate of Patti Newton… Now Patti and go shopping together and get into a lot of trouble – and she knows the best showbiz goss.”

Marcia Hines, Still Shining: The 50th Anniversary Concert Tour, Canberra Theatre, August 29.