Barbara Cook, Broadway Star Who Became a Cabaret Mainstay, Dies at 89
Source: The New York Times
[font size=1]Barbara Cook in concert at Carnegie Hall in 2006. Credit Richard Termine for The New York Times[/font]
Barbara Cook, a lyric soprano whose rousing songs and romantic ballads touched Americas heart in an odyssey that began in the golden age of Broadway musicals, overcame alcoholism, depression and obesity, and forged a second life in cabarets and concert halls, died early Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 89.
Adam LeGrant, her son and only immediate survivor, said the cause was respiratory failure.
In 2011, six decades after her Broadway debut in a short-lived musical, Ms. Cook received Kennedy Center Honors from President Barack Obama. It had been a remarkable journey from a broken home in Atlanta to national renown as a singer who never learned to read music but became one of the finest emotive interpreters of the Great American Songbook.
While her voice had darkened over the years, critics said that even in her mid-80s it retained the richness, clarity and expressiveness of the Broadway ingénue she had been in 1957, when she rendered Goodnight, My Someone and a soaring Till There Was You as the original Marian, the librarian, in Meredith Willsons blockbuster The Music Man.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/theater/barbara-cook-dead.html?smid=fb-share
[font size=5]Barbara Cook, Broadway Star Who Became a Cabaret Mainstay, Dies at 89[font]
Barbara Cook and Glen Campbell - on the same day.
gademocrat7
(10,665 posts)Warpy
(111,327 posts)and I especially love the one about rehearsing "Glitter and Be Gay" from "Candide." She was one of the few performers who could manage Bernstein's demanding score without sounding shrill.
I love that she kept performing on a small scale into her 80s. RIP, good lady, and thank you for your Cunegonde.
TNNurse
(6,929 posts)I have always been sad that I cannot sing...but I am grateful that Barbara Cook and Glen Campbell could.
Beacool
(30,250 posts)She was very talented. My condolences to her loved ones.
Hieronymus
(6,039 posts)Kurovski
(34,655 posts)I loved this 1985 concert version of the show