SUSANNAH MCCORKLE Biography - Musicians

 
 

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SUSANNAH MCCORKLE

Name: Susannah McCorkle                                                                 
Born: 4 January 1946 Berkeley, California                                               
Died: 19 May 2001                                                                       
                                                                                         
Susannah McCorkle (4 January 1946 - 19 May 2001) was an American jazz singer             
much admired for her direct, unadorned singing style and quiet intensity.               
                                                                                         
McCorkle was born in Berkeley, California. She studied modern languages at the           
University of California, Berkeley. McCorkle began singing professionally after         
hearing recordings of Billie Holiday in Paris in the late 1960s. She nearly             
became an interpreter at the European Commission in Brussels, but moved instead         
to London in 1972 to pursue a career in singing. While in the UK, she made two           
albums which, although well received, enjoyed only limited circulation.                 
                                                                                         
In the late 1970s, McCorkle returned to the United States and settled in New             
York City, where a five-month engagement at the Cookery in Greenwich Village             
brought her to wider public attention and elicited rave reviews from critics.           
                                                                                         
During the 1980s, McCorkle continued to record; her maturing style and the               
darkening timbre of her voice greatly enhanced her performances. In the early           
1990s, two of the albums McCorkle made for Concord Records, No More Blues and           
Sábia, were enormously successful and made her name known to the wider world.           
She was recorded by the Smithsonian Institution which at the time made her the           
youngest singer ever to have been included in its popular music series. McCorkle         
played Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher and Alice Tully Halls five times and               
Carnegie Hall three times, and was featured soloist with Skitch Henderson and           
the 80-piece New York Pops in a concert of Brazilian music.                             
                                                                                         
Thanks to her linguistic skills, McCorkle translated lyrics of Brazilian, French,       
and Italian songs, notably those for her Brazilian album Sabia. McCorkle also           
had several short stories published and, in 1991, began work on her first novel.         
She published fiction in Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and non-fiction in         
the New York Times Magazine and in American Heritage, including lengthy articles         
on Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, Irving Berlin and Mae West.                               
                                                                                         
McCorkle suffered for many years from depression and cancer, and took her own           
life at age 55 by leaping off the balcony of her highrise Manhattan apartment.           
She was alone in her home at the time. The police immediately entered her home           
after identifying her body and found no foul play. Suicide was ruled the cause           
of death.                                                                               
                                                                                         
Haunted Heart, a biography of Susannah McCorkle written by Linda Dahl, was               
published in September 2006 by University of Michigan Press.