Gail Boggs, the daughter of Willie Boggs, a tree surgeon, and Alice, a dietitian, described having always dreamed of being a
Broadway star. Her professional acting break came in 1971 playing Silvia with a touring group in Australia in a pop-rock version of
Shakespeare's play
The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In a 1975 interview, she reported that a chance meeting with
Todd Rundgren at an intersection in
Manhattan led her to singing backup alongside her friend Darcy Miller and
Laura Nyro on
Felix Cavaliere's second album,
Destiny, before singing with
Hall & Oates on
War Babies as well as with
Carly Simon on
Spy and
Come Upstairs. During the mid-1970s, Boggs provided vocals and percussion as a member of "The Striders" alongside "The Original Flying Machine"-alum Joel "Bishop" O'Brien and
Robbie Dupree. Boggs was also a vocalist in
David Sancious's short-lived band "Tone". In 1984, Boggs starred in the one-woman cabaret nightclub act
The Gail Boggs Show at "Upstairs at Greene Street". The show ran weekly for the next year and a half. Boggs was one of the first to hear a recording of
Madonna's "
Like a Virgin" and she pushed
Grammy Award-winning writer and producer
Nile Rodgers to release the song as the first single off Madonna's then-upcoming album. Images of Boggs are found in the Martha Swope archive at the
New York Public Library. ==Personal life==