Issue Two

"The recent death of cabaret singer Susannah McCorkle diminishes me as it diminishes every lover of popular song in America. Her suicide at age 55 is tragic on several levels. She was more than one of the guiding lights of the pop-jazz vocal tradition. She was a relentless seeker of finely crafted songs of the past and present, and dedicated to preserving the timeless melodies and lyrics that have raised popular song writing in America to an art form.

One can only guess what prompted her to plunge from her apartment in New York City on May 19, 2001. For, although she reportedly left a suicide note, the contents have not been released to the media. Her obituaries, however, mentioned an ex-husband as well as an ongoing battle with depression. Songs of depression, in fact, occupied a large segment of her repertoire. Yet she made it a point in her live performances to always end on an upbeat note.

The only upside to her short life (she seemed much younger than her years) is the rich legacy of 17 CD’s she left us. Her body of work is exceptional for the choice of material as well as the level of performance. McCorkle was a regular performer at Manhattan’s posh supper clubs and a fixture at the famous Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, whose manager declared her the best jazz singer working in cabaret.

Born in Berkeley, California on January 4, 1946, Susannah McCorkle was not a musical prodigy. She majored in Italian literature at the University of California at Berkeley and traveled to Europe to study languages and to begin a literary career. As a student in Paris in the 1970’s, she discovered American jazz when a friend played her a recording by Billie Holiday. She said that one record completely revised her thinking and made her want to become a professional singer.

"Above all," she wrote in a New York Times article in 1994, "I loved lyrics. I wanted to convey the meaning of every single phrase so that I could make even the oldest, most familiar songs seem as new and fresh to my audiences as they were to me." She moved to London in 1972, acquired a wardrobe of "pre-worn pre-war dresses," and began singing in pubs with jazz bands. Her repertoire consisted mainly of romantic standards of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Jazz singing, she claimed, gave her a sense of belonging.

Returning to the United States in the late 1970’s, McCorkle had her American breakthrough with a seven-month engagement at the Cookery in Greenwich Village. Two record albums recorded earlier in London were released in America and attracted the attention of music critics and disc jockeys. After several more albums for small labels, McCorkle was signed by Concord Jazz and recorded steadily for that prestigious label until her death. Her Concord releases included records devoted to the songs of Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. Her honors include three Album of the Year awards from Stereo Review.

Stephen Holden wrote in his New York Times obituary, "She was a passionate, intrepid scholar of 20th Century pop." Not content to merely sing the familiar lyrics from the standard repertoire of Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter and Lorenz Hart, McCorkle would research the composers, unearthing lyrics that would continually amaze audiences acquainted only with the classic versions. She also had a knack for discovering examples of excellence by contemporary songwriters–not an easy task. Her 1981 collection, The People That You Never Get To Love, now available on CD, is an excellent introduction to McCorkle’s versatility.

Her cabaret performances featured rich anecdotal histories of the songwriters whose works she performed. Her penultimate CD, 1999’s From Broken Hearts To Blue Skies, which became the basis of one of her cabaret shows, is an eclectic display of songs by everyone from Antonio Carlos Jobim to Dave Frishberg to Irving Berlin. The deliberate sequence of material is meant to describe the romantic mood swings of a single woman in New York City. Now that she is gone, it seems natural to conclude that Ms. McCorkle was opening personal wounds with each performance. Shades of Billie Holiday…

One could argue that Susannah McCorkle took her role as performer too seriously. In her New York Times article she described how she had decided at one point to adhere to a repertoire that was politically correct. She resolved to give up songs that could be construed as demeaning to women, songs that portrayed a so-called "doormat" image. "The Man I Love," "My Man" and "Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend," for example, were eliminated. McCorkle carried the crusade even further by deleting any songs that had to do with earthquakes, fire and floods, even asbestos, which is a known carcinogen. And, as for songs that celebrated smoking–forget about it.

In addition to her singing career, Susannah McCorkle was able to realize her ambition to write with fiction that appeared in Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan and The O. Henry Book of Prize Short Stories and nonfiction in The Times and American Heritage. She reportedly was at work on a novel at the time of her death. Her lengthy pieces for American Heritage included highly researched appreciations of Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith and Irving Berlin.

In the Berlin article, McCorkle revealed her involvement with youth, testimony to her devotion to perpetuating pop standards. She conducted workshops in American popular song for kids at Lincoln Center. She wrote, "I’m not trying to talk them out of liking their own music. I just want them to know that down the road there’s a big bunch of old songs with beautiful melodies and good words that they should know about; not just because this music is loved all over the world, but because as you get older, they are such good company when you’re thinking about love and life."

McCorkle’s voice was not an extraordinary instrument, and she frequently had to alter a melody to adjust it to her limited range. Dusky and plaintive sounding, kittenish at times, her voice conveyed a latent vulnerability. She excelled at the romantic ballads that have defined the best jazz and cabaret singers throughout time. Her lack of training was not a handicap because her main concern was interpretation, not vocal pyrotechnics. Ethel Merman could shake the rafters when she belted out "There’s No Business Like Show Business." But McCorkle slows the song to glacial speed and reveals an underlying sadness in Irving Berlin’s razzle-dazzle anthem.

A personality profile of Susannah McCorkle would probably label her as an overachiever destined to crash and burn. As accurate as that assessment might be, it would not account for the saucy, devil-may-care attitude she conveyed in person and the ultimately optimistic image in her meticulously crafted recordings. Her writings at times reveal darker dimensions to her personality and, in the light of her fate, seem strangely prophetic.

In her American Heritage tribute to actress/singer Ethel Waters, for example, McCorkle tried to rationalize the reason for the obscurity of Waters compared to the fame of Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. She wrote, "Waters didn’t die young and tragically, as they did." Then, McCorkle continued, "You don’t become a jazz legend by growing old, by playing grandmothers." Susannah McCorkle may not become a legend as renowned as Billie Holiday or Bessie Smith, but she will surely be remembered by the people she touched for her unique contribution to the tradition of American popular song. Sadly, that tradition has lost one of its most ardent voices, and those songs may never sound as good again.

Highly recommended McCorkle CD’s:

• The People That You Never Get to Know (1981) TJA-10034-2
• I’ll Take Romance –CJ-491
• Sabia (1990) CCD-4418
• Hearts and Minds (2000) CCD-4897-2
  Her last CD-a gem!