Discipline: Literature

Susannah McCorkle

Discipline: Literature
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1983
Susannah McCorkle (1946-2001) was an American jazz singer. She was inspired to become a singer when she heard Billie Holiday sing "I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues." She began her career in the early 1970s by singing at pubs in London with bandleader John Chilton. She also worked in London with Keith Ingham and Dick Sudhalter and recorded her first two albums, one a tribute to Harry Warren, the other to Johnny Mercer. After moving back to the U.S. in the 1970s, she sang at the Cookery in Greenwich Village and the Riverboat in Manhattan. Later in her career she sang often at the Algonquin Hotel. Stereo Review magazine named How Do You Keep the Music Playing (1986) album of the year, while critic Leonard Feather named it vocal album of the year. No More Blues (1988), her first album for Concord Records, was recorded with guitarists Emily Remler and Bucky Pizzarelli and pianist Dave Frishberg. Her writing was published in Cosmopolitan, Newsday, New York, and the O. Henry Award Prize Stories.

Studios

Monday Music

Susannah McCorkle worked in the Monday Music studio.

Given to the residency by the Monday Music Club of Orange, NJ, Monday Music Studio is sited next to an enormous boulder deposited by glaciers thousands of years ago. A small dormer once pierced the east slope of the roof, but after damage suffered in the 1938 hurricane, the roof was rebuilt without the dormer. The interior…

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