Author: Linda Dahl
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
Year Published: 2006
Format / Pages: / 324 pages
Review: This is the first major, detailed biography of the late jazz singer, Susannah McCorkle. A memorable reading experience, this fine book will linger in the reader's mind for a very long time. It is full of insights into this remarkable jazz singer. The details of her death are revealed. In addition to singing, McCorkle was an accomplished writer and linguist.
Following the introduction, there are eleven well-written and well-researched chapters. Notes, index, and selected discography are included. The writing style is crisp, concise, and entertaining.
McCorkle's being held captive and repeatedly raped as a young woman is covered, and the effect it had on her life, and an in-depth look at her bipolar condition is given. Her love life and marriages are examined and shared with the reader.
That McCorkle had a perfect ear for music and lyric is well-documented. When she found her home in jazz singing, she made the collection of American Standards her own in only the way she could conceive it, and made some of the most outstanding recordings ever made for the public listeners. Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Harry Warren, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Hoagy Carmichael, and Irving Berlin were among the many whose songs she recorded in her own, special style.
Her tragic, planned suicide came when she stepped out of her 16th floor apartment in New York. She walked out of the window and plunged to her death below on 86th Street. A man looking for a parking space discovered her mangled body. Her lovely, sophisticated voice, that could touch and sustain a feeling of pure child-like joy as well as a haunting sense of blues, was silenced. Her sound lives on in the many recordings she completed.
This is a fine biography, accurate and honest, and full of surprises. It is highly recommended reading. Get a copy for yourself, a dear friend, and have your local librarian place a copy in the library for its reading patrons. As a biography of a complex show business personality, this is one of the very finest written in recent years. Haunted heart is what Susannah McCorkle was, and the book pulls no punches. Excellent, this is a classic biography of high caliber and graceful writing!
Additional Information: Check it out @ Amazon.com
ISBN: 0472115642
Reviewed by: Lee Prosser