OPEN POST: Manor Music Monday With The Lovely Susannah McCorkle!

Hi'ya music sloots, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Monday! Tonight, DJ Li'l Scratch will at the Manor's "Gimme A Stiffy!" bar and lounge playing tunes by a beautifully smooth vocalist who was also a polyglot, singing fluently in English, Italian, Portuguese, French, and German. In fact, her 1990 album, "Sabia," and 1993's "From Bassie to Brazil," are considered definitive jazz explorations of Brazilian Bossa Nova. And get this, she was also a successful writer. Her short stories were published in "Mademoiselle" and "Cosmo," and her story "Ramona by the Sea" won a prestigious O. Henry Award in 1975. In the category of "What Couldn't He Or She Do?" she's way up there.

Yes, it's the amazing Susannah McCorckle, who was working as a translator and linguist in Paris in the late 1960s when she heard a recording of Billie Holiday singing "I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues." That's all it took. That single moment inspired her to drop her translation career completely, move to Rome to learn how to sing. Developing an encyclopedic knowledge of The Great American Songbook - she was nothing if not intellectually curious - she spent much of the 1970s living in Rome and London, honing her craft in European jazz clubs before moving to New York. She found almost instant acclaim with critics and crowds, wowing them at small clubs and earning a recording contract. In fact, in the 1970s, she was hailed by many as the best jazz singer of her generation and packed them in at venues like The Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. At one point, it was said she had a repertoire of over 2,000 songs. 

For many singers, interpretive intelligence can be hard to come by - and by that I mean the ability to find the true heart of a lyric, and without vocal gimmicks - yet it seemed to come naturally for Susannah. The foundation for her approach likely came from her college studies of Italian Literature at UC Berkeley, which fueled her lifelong love for language and her razor-sharp precision with song lyrics no matter their language.

If you've read anything about Susannah, much is made of her battle with depression - which she kept well hidden until her suicide in 2001 - as if "depression" somehow explains her unique gifts. That's doing her a great disservice, I think.

Here was a singer whose subtle, seemingly spontaneous, emotional intensity was very much wedded to the lyric at hand. In other words, she was one of the most successful jazz club acts in the 1980s and 90s for a reason: she sang like a dream. 2000's "Hearts And Minds" was her last set of recordings before her death, and its every bit as eloquent and heartfelt as you could hope, here in the song, "I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire."

You can listen to the entire "Hearts and Minds" album right here: 

What are you listening to this week? DJ Li'l Scratch wants to know.
Till next time...purr, bitches, purr! 🐾

Photo Credits: Getty Images, Concord Records