One of Duluth’s more notable bands of the mid-to-late 1970s was an act called Condor, but there is very little information about the group online, so this post is a crowdsourcing quest to change that.

There are at least two online references to Condor vocalist Margaret Carlson that reference her former band.

One is a 2002 Chicago Tribune article that notes Carlson “crisscrossed the U.S. with a rock band, reprising Jefferson Airplane and Steely Dan hits in smoky bars,” before noting she was making moves in the Chi-town jazz circuit.

The second is a 2003 Budgeteer News story reporting that Carlson was singing that summer with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra at Lucius Woods Performing Arts Center. Carlson told the Budgeteer reporter she sang several Heart songs with Condor

“I did ‘Barracuda’ and ‘Magic Man’ and ‘Crazy on You,'” Carlson said.

The Chicago Tribune story provides these details about Carlson’s career following Condor:

After quitting the rock cover band, she worked as a bookkeeper in Wisconsin, where she met and married her husband. The couple settled in Florida, where Carlson performed at resorts with a pianist who introduced her to the music of George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Big Band-era composers.

In the mid-1980s, around the time her husband’s job in the printing industry brought the couple to Batavia, Carlson dropped out of music again, this time to raise a family. “Once in a while I performed at a party, but most people I knew had no idea I was a professional singer,” she said. “I kept up my contacts, though, because I knew I would want to get back into music when the kids were older.”

Carlson’s singing career rebooted with a pair of jazz albums in the late 1990s.

… and that’s all we know at the Perfect Duluth Day headquarters. Who were the other band members? Are any of them still performing? Are there Condor recordings out there? Band photos? Posters?