L.A. Kings anthem singer Gloria Loring: "She was worth a goal"

Here's a fun story from Don Cherry's excellent new book, "Don Cherry's Hockey Stories and Stuff", about Gloria Loring, the anthem singer for the L.A Kings (late 1970's? early 1980's?).

We go into LA and in those days, everybody knew Gloria Loring. She was married to Alan Thicke.

She sang the anthems before the games, but she would not sing until the crowd went nuts. She’d stand there while they got all worked up. They loved her. She was worth a goal, she really was. I just happened to say to Frosty Forristal, one of our trainers, “Gee, she gets them all worked up. She’s worth a goal.”

He says, “Yeah.” I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about.

In those days, you had to have a cord for the microphone. They didn’t have the cordless ones like they do now.

So she gets to centre ice and the crowd is all worked up and she lifts the mike and starts to sing, and there’s silence!
Now the crowd dies down and one of the workers comes out. But he can’t fix it and she has to go over and sit in the penalty box and sing using the announcer’s mike.

It ruined her whole thing.

Frosty had crawled underneath the seats and cut the wire!

We won the game.

[Co-writer Al Strachan’s note]: A few years later, when the Edmonton Oilers were taking on the Kings in a playoff game in the same building, Don was working for Hockey Night in Canada and told this story to Oilers coach Glen Sather.

Oddly enough, before the game the next night, the cord got cut again. Sather denied any involvement.

Fun fact: Gloria Loring and Alan Thicke co-composed the theme song for tv's "The Facts of Life", and Gloria sang on the track.

Here's a video of Gloria singing at an L.A. Raiders game.