Susannah McCorkle Biography Quotes 11 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Susannah McCorkle was born in 1946 in Berkeley, California, and grew up with a strong attraction to language and literature that would later shape her approach to song. As a young woman she studied languages and traveled widely, sharpening an ear for nuance and phrasing that proved central to her identity as a singer and writer. Books, films, and records introduced her to the classic American popular song tradition, and she developed an early affinity for the storytelling power of lyrics.

European Beginnings
In the early 1970s she moved to Europe, spending time in Italy and then London. There she immersed herself in jazz records and live performance, discovering Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee as guiding inspirations. London's small clubs and cabaret rooms offered McCorkle her first sustained opportunities to sing in public, and she began building a repertoire that mixed swing-era standards with newer material. She also started contributing incisive liner notes and essays, revealing a scholarly interest in lyric history and composer intent that would become a hallmark of her career.

Return to the United States
By the mid-to-late 1970s McCorkle had returned to the United States and settled in New York City. She entered a vibrant cabaret and jazz scene anchored by intimate rooms, and she quickly became a regular presence at venues such as the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room. Early recordings, including projects that featured the song The People That You Never Get to Love, announced her as an interpreter with a novelist's eye for character and a linguist's care for diction.

Recordings and Stage Work
Through the 1980s and 1990s she recorded for labels that took vocal jazz seriously, most notably Concord Jazz. She built themed programs around lyricists and eras, and her albums drew attention for their cohesion and research as much as for their singing. From Bessie to Brazil highlighted her range from classic blues to bossa nova; a Cole Porter tribute underlined her affinity for urbane wordplay and sophisticated harmony; other projects explored the craft of Johnny Mercer and the melodic grace of American film and theater songs. Onstage she balanced standards with contemporary repertoire, bringing in gems by songwriters such as Dave Frishberg and Rupert Holmes alongside material by Antonio Carlos Jobim, treating each lyric as a dramatic monologue.

Collaborators and Influences
McCorkle worked closely with pianists who understood her dynamic approach to tempo and text, including Ben Aronov and Allen Farnham, and she benefited from producers and label figures who prized careful curation, among them Concord's Carl Jefferson. Critics and fellow artists recognized her kinship with earlier masters of intimate song interpretation, Billie Holiday for depth of feeling, Peggy Lee for cool economy, and cabaret pioneers like Mabel Mercer for narrative clarity, while noting that McCorkle's blend of scholarship and emotional directness was distinctly her own. She also drew on her language skills to perform material in Portuguese and to honor Brazil's modern song traditions, weaving international colors into the American songbook.

Artistic Approach
What set McCorkle apart was the balance of intellect and feeling. She chose keys and tempos to serve the story, shaped consonants and vowels to match character, and wrote liner notes that traced the journey of a song from stage or screen to the bandstand. Her programs often included lesser-known verses or alternate lyrics, and she championed under-sung composers with the same fervor she brought to Gershwin-era classics. Listeners and colleagues frequently remarked on her ability to make an audience lean forward, treating each performance as chamber music for the voice.

Writing and Scholarship
Beyond performance, McCorkle wrote essays and notes that appeared in magazines and on her own albums, melding biography, cultural history, and close reading of lyrics. She treated popular songs as literature, works with contexts, subtexts, and dramatic arcs, and her research influenced arrangements and repertoire choices. That dual identity as singer-scholar helped her connect with listeners who valued both the heart and the mind of a song.

Later Years and Legacy
In New York she maintained a demanding schedule of club residencies, festival appearances, and recording sessions, even as she coped with long-running struggles with depression. She died in 2001 in New York City, a loss that resonated deeply across the cabaret and jazz communities. Musicians who had shared bandstands with her, among them Ben Aronov and Allen Farnham, and songwriters she championed, including Dave Frishberg and Rupert Holmes, joined critics and fans in saluting her clarity of diction, interpretive intelligence, and courage in programming.

Susannah McCorkle's albums remain reference points for singers learning how to inhabit lyrics without oversinging, and for listeners who crave the intimate, story-driven tradition at the heart of the American songbook. Her recorded tributes to classic writers, her advocacy for modern songs, and her body of liner notes together form a legacy in which musical interpretation and literary understanding are inseparable.

Our collection contains 11 quotes who is written by Susannah, under the main topics: Music - Writing - Parenting - Mortality - Romantic.