Susannah McCorkle

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Susannah McCorkle (born January 4, 1946 in Berkeley , † May 19, 2001 in New York City ) was an American jazz singer.

Live and act

McCorkle was the daughter of an anthropology professor and the family moved frequently. She graduated from high school in Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) and studied languages ​​at the University of Berkeley from 1964 (Bachelor in Italian Literature 1969), where she also spent a long time in Mexico, worked as a translator in Paris and Rome (and as a singer on an Italian cruise ship) when, stimulated by listening to records by Billie Holiday , she decided to become a jazz singer instead and moved to London in 1972. In 1976 her debut album ("The Music of Harry Warren") was released on EMI , followed by an album with songs by Johnny Mercer .

There she also met her accompanying pianist and husband (until 1980) Keith Ingham , who also went to New York with her. During this time she also worked as a singer with trumpeter Dick Sudhalter in the USA in 1975 , but only moved permanently to New York City in 1978 , where a five-month engagement at the "Cookery" in Greenwich Village made her famous. She usually appeared with piano trio accompaniment in cabaret and recorded regularly from the 1980s. In 1988 she had great success with “No More Blues” and in 1990 with “Sábia” (with Brazilian songs, some of which she translated), both with Concord. McCorkle had a particular affinity for Brazilian bossa nova - her favorite piece was “Aguas de Marco” by Antônio Carlos Jobim - which was also still well received by audiences in New York.

She performed at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and sang with the New York Pops under Skitch Henderson. After surviving breast cancer (diagnosed in 1990), she suffered from depression and in 2001 she killed herself by falling from the balcony of her Manhattan apartment.

McCorkle, in his own words, was directly influenced by Billie Holiday. She saw herself less as a jazz singer and placed special emphasis on the lyrics, which she attributed to her theater background at the university.

McCorkle was already at university and published short stories in magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle (for "Ramona by the Sea", published in Mademoiselle 1973, she received one of the O. Henry Awards for the same year), worked on a novel (1991 ) and memories of her early years as a singer in Rome and wrote portraits of Ethel Waters , Bessie Smith , Mae West , Irving Berlin and others in the New York Times Magazine and American Heritage . a.

McCorkle was married twice (to pianist Ingham and to CBS journalist Dan DiNicola, separated in 1999, then divorced).

literature

  • Linda Dahl: Haunted Heart - a Biography of Susannah McCorkle . University of Michigan Press, 2006, ISBN 0-472-11564-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ She suffered from manic depression, which was also hereditary in the family - her sister was schizophrenic, her father was also manically depressed and killed himself. However, she often did not take any medication. Shortly before her death, she lost her preferred stage, the Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel , to a younger singer. She was also disappointed that her record company Concord had decided to release a compilation album instead of a new album. That album became her best-selling after her death.
  2. ^ CBS interview 1990
personal data
SURNAME McCorkle, Susannah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz singer
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Berkeley, California
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 2001
Place of death New York City