Some Very Good Snow
You're invited to partake in samplingone of the best unique voices in our lifetime.
She has an incredibly accurate range and can switch vibrato on & off at will.
I present Ms. Phoebe Snow.
The following is a live concert featuring her,
which you are able to enjoy for free, thanks to Youtube.
From The Independent;
In response to:
Best known in her native US for "Poetry Man", the jazz-tinged love song she wrote about an affair with a married man, Phoebe Snow possessed a formidable contralto voice, with a four-octave range, and a bluesy, smoky, soulful quality that, along with her curly hair and olive skin meant she was sometimes thought to be black, when she was in fact Jewish.
Her 1974 eponymous debut became a classic of the singer-songwriter genre and earned her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist alongside Bad Company, Johnny Bristol, David Essex, Graham Central Station and the winner, the film composer Marvin Hamlisch. Many industry insiders attending the ceremony in March 1975 felt Snow should have won, but she was happy enough just to be there, and to see Aretha Franklin, one her main influences, perform.
By then, the delicate "Poetry Man" and her delightful first album were on their way into the Top 5, and, after opening for Jackson Browne and Paul Simon, she seemed destined to be a mainstay of jazz and adult contemporary radio stations, which had started to feature the easy shuffle of "Harpo's Blues", another deceptively dark highlight from her debut. In the summer of 1975 she graced the cover of Rolling Stone and was back in the US Top 30 with a stunning, soaring guest appearance on "Gone At Last", a collaboration with Simon and the gospel group the Jessy Dixon Singers, from his No 1 album Still Crazy After All These Years.
Snow took her pregnancy, by boyfriend Phil Kearns, in her stride. But in December 1975, she gave birth to a girl, Valerie, who suffered from asphyxia and was put in intensive care.
Over the next three decades, Snow rejected pleas to place her child in an institution and devoted most of her time and energy to her. Though Valerie's eyesight and hearing had been badly affected and she couldn't speak, she did recognise her mother and enjoyed her singing. Snow never regretted her decision to sacrifice her career and care for her daughter who defied medical expectations and died in 2007.
However, Snow struggled with self-esteem and weight issues, and a music business desperate to pigeonhole her. "I'm not a natural gorgeous person," she reflected. "I mean, if I'm gonna look presentable, I have to work at it." To support her daughter, she recorded advertising jingles and commercials in a voice so distinctive she could only do a handful a year.
Snow was not only a sensitive singer-songwriter of disarming honesty, but also a supreme interpreter of other people's material, as she demonstrated on P.S. and I Can't Complain, the two albums of covers she released in the nineties. Indeed, she scored her only UK hit in 1979 with a wonderful version of Paul McCartney's "Every Night", from the Beatle's 1970 solo debut that she reinterpreted for Against The Grain, the last of her four Columbia albums.
Born in New York in 1950, she grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. Her father, who worked for Viking Press and subsequently as a pest controller, was a frustrated performer, and struggled to come to terms with her precociousness. But her mother, a dance teacher, saw her daughter's talent and bought her piano and dance lessons....
Best known in her native US for "Poetry Man", the jazz-tinged love song she wrote about an affair with a married man, Phoebe Snow possessed a formidable contralto voice, with a four-octave range, and a bluesy, smoky, soulful quality that, along with her curly hair and olive skin meant she was sometimes thought to be black, when she was in fact Jewish.
Her 1974 eponymous debut became a classic of the singer-songwriter genre and earned her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist alongside Bad Company, Johnny Bristol, David Essex, Graham Central Station and the winner, the film composer Marvin Hamlisch. Many industry insiders attending the ceremony in March 1975 felt Snow should have won, but she was happy enough just to be there, and to see Aretha Franklin, one her main influences, perform.
By then, the delicate "Poetry Man" and her delightful first album were on their way into the Top 5, and, after opening for Jackson Browne and Paul Simon, she seemed destined to be a mainstay of jazz and adult contemporary radio stations, which had started to feature the easy shuffle of "Harpo's Blues", another deceptively dark highlight from her debut. In the summer of 1975 she graced the cover of Rolling Stone and was back in the US Top 30 with a stunning, soaring guest appearance on "Gone At Last", a collaboration with Simon and the gospel group the Jessy Dixon Singers, from his No 1 album Still Crazy After All These Years.
Snow took her pregnancy, by boyfriend Phil Kearns, in her stride. But in December 1975, she gave birth to a girl, Valerie, who suffered from asphyxia and was put in intensive care.
Over the next three decades, Snow rejected pleas to place her child in an institution and devoted most of her time and energy to her. Though Valerie's eyesight and hearing had been badly affected and she couldn't speak, she did recognise her mother and enjoyed her singing. Snow never regretted her decision to sacrifice her career and care for her daughter who defied medical expectations and died in 2007.
However, Snow struggled with self-esteem and weight issues, and a music business desperate to pigeonhole her. "I'm not a natural gorgeous person," she reflected. "I mean, if I'm gonna look presentable, I have to work at it." To support her daughter, she recorded advertising jingles and commercials in a voice so distinctive she could only do a handful a year.
Snow was not only a sensitive singer-songwriter of disarming honesty, but also a supreme interpreter of other people's material, as she demonstrated on P.S. and I Can't Complain, the two albums of covers she released in the nineties. Indeed, she scored her only UK hit in 1979 with a wonderful version of Paul McCartney's "Every Night", from the Beatle's 1970 solo debut that she reinterpreted for Against The Grain, the last of her four Columbia albums.
Born in New York in 1950, she grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. Her father, who worked for Viking Press and subsequently as a pest controller, was a frustrated performer, and struggled to come to terms with her precociousness. But her mother, a dance teacher, saw her daughter's talent and bought her piano and dance lessons....
Comments (5)
She died at the age of 60 back in 2011, a year after a brain hemorrhage.
She appear to be very confident and proud in her performance. Very convincing. I do like confident and proud women.
probably has a significant amount of confidence, or too much alcohol to drink.