Barbara Cook

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Barbara Cook
Born October 25, 1927 (1927-10-25) (age 80)
Origin Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Genre(s) Musical theatre, traditional pop
Occupation(s) Singer, actress
Years active 1951–present
Label(s) Urania (1958–1959)
Columbia (1975–1977)
DRG (1993–present)
Website www.barbaracook.com

Barbara Cook (born October 25, 1927) is a American singer and actress who first came to prominence in the 1950s after creating roles in the Broadway musicals Candide and The Music Man, among others. In the seventies, she began a second career that continues to this day as a cabaret and concert singer. Cook is widely recognized as one of the "premier interpreters" of musical theatre songs and standards, in particular the songs of composer Stephen Sondheim.[1] In 1958, she won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for The Music Man.

Contents

[edit] Biography

She was born in Atlanta, Georgia to a traveling hat salesman and an operator for Southern Bell. Her parents divorced when she was a child and, after her only sister died of whooping cough, Barbara lived alone with her mother. She later described their relationship as "so close, too close. I slept with my mother until I came to New York. Slept in the same bed with her. That's just, it's wrong. But to me, it was the norm....As far as she was concerned, we were one person."[1] Though Barbara began singing at an early age, at the Elks Club and to her father over the phone, she spent three years after graduating from high school working as a typist.[1]

While visiting New York City in 1948 with her mother, Cook decided to stay and try to find work as an actress.[2] She made her Broadway debut a year later, as Sandy in the short-lived 1951 musical Flahooley. She next took roles in revivals of two Rodgers and Hammerstein hits: Ado Annie in Oklahoma! and Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel. In 1955, she began to attract major critical praise when she played the supporting role of Hilda Miller in Plain and Fancy. Cook's good reviews and clear soprano voice enabled her to win the role of Cunegonde in Leonard Bernstein's new musical Candide in 1956. In this show, she sang "Glitter and Be Gay".

Although Candide was not a success, Cook's portrayal of Cunegonde established her as one of Broadway's leading ingenues. Her two most famous roles after this were Marian the Librarian in Meredith Willson's 1957 hit The Music Man and as Amalia Balash in the 1962 Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick musical She Loves Me. The song "Ice Cream" from the latter became one of Cook's signature songs.

During the 1960s, Cook created roles in some less successful musicals: Liesl Brandel in The Gay Life (1961) and Carol Deems in Something More! (1964). She also tried her hand at non-musical roles, replacing Sandy Dennis in the play Any Wednesday and originating the role of Patsy Newquist in Jules Feiffer's Little Murders. Cook's last original musical role on Broadway came in 1971 when she played Dolly Talbo in The Grass Harp. As she began struggling with depression, obesity, and alcoholism in the seventies (she eventually quit drinking in 1977), Cook began finding trouble getting stage work.[1]

Then she met composer Wally Harper, who convinced her to put together a concert. On January 26, 1975, accompanied by Harper, she made her debut in a successful solo concert at Carnegie Hall that resulted in a popular live album and eventually became "legendary."[2] Continuing a collaboration with Harper that lasted until his death in 2004, Cook became a successful concert performer. She returned only sporadically to acting, performing in occasional studio cast recordings of stage musicals, and originating the role of Margaret White in the notorious musical version of Stephen King's Carrie - The Musical when it premiered in England. After Wally Harper's death, Cook made the painful adjustment to new accompanists in solo shows like Tribute (a reference to Harper) and No One Is Alone that continued to receive acclaim; The New York Times exclaimed in 2005 that she was "at the top of her game....Cook's voice is remarkably unchanged from 1958, when she won the Tony Award for playing Marian the Librarian in The Music Man. A few high notes aside, it is, eerily, as rich and clear as ever."[1]

Cook married acting teacher David LeGrant on March 9, 1952. They had one child, Adam, in 1959, and were divorced in 1965.

On June 25th 2006, Cook was the special guest star of the Award Winning Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, celebrating GMCW's Silver Anniversary in a performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

Cook was the featured artist at the Arts! by George gala on September 29, 2007 at the Fairfax campus of George Mason University. On October 22, 2007, Cook sang at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts (Fort Lauderdale, FL) with the Fort Lauderdale Gay Men's Chorus in the chorus's concert entitled "An Evening With Barbara Cook". Upon completion of the concert, an almost full house greeted her with a round of "Happy Birthday" in honor of her impending 80th birthday. On December 2, 2007, Cook celebrated her birthday in the UK with a concert at the home of English National Opera - The Coliseum Theatre, in London's West End.

Most notably as she entered her ninth decade, she performed in two sold-out concerts with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. The New York Times's reviewer threw his hat in the air, [1] writing of Miss Cook as "a performer spreading the gospel of simplicity, self-reliance and truth" who is "never glib" and summoning adjectives such as "astonishing" and "transcendent," concluding that she sings with "a tenderness and honesty that could break your heart and mend it all at once."

Barbara Cook will appear in "Strictly Gershwin" at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England with the full company of English National Ballet from Friday 13 June to Sunday 22 June 2008.

[edit] Discography

Solo

  • Songs of Perfect Propriety (1958)
  • Sings From the Heart: Memorable Songs of Rodgers & Hart (1959)
  • At Carnegie Hall (1975)
  • As Of Today (1977)
  • It's Better With a Band (1981)
  • The Disney Album (1988)
  • Dorothy Fields: Close as Pages in a Book (1993)
  • Live from London (1994)
  • Oscar Winners: The Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II (1997)
  • All I Ask of You (1999)
  • The Champion Season: A Salute to Gower Champion (1999)
  • Sings Mostly Sondheim: Live at Carnegie Hall (2001)
  • Count Your Blessings (2003)—Grammy Award nominee (Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album)
  • Barbara Cook's Broadway! (2004)
  • Tribute (2005)
  • Barbara Cook at The Met (2006)
  • No One Is Alone (2007)

Cast and studio cast recordings

  • Flahooley (1951)
  • Plain and Fancy (1955)
  • Candide (1956)
  • The Music Man (1957)—Grammy Award winner (Best Original Cast Album)
  • Hansel and Gretel (1958)
  • The Gay Life (1961)
  • Show Boat (Studio Cast, 1962)
  • She Loves Me (1963)—Grammy Award winner (Best Score From An Original Cast Show Album)
  • The King and I (1964)
  • Show Boat (Lincoln Center Cast, 1966)
  • The Grass Harp (1971)
  • Follies in Concert (1985)
  • The Secret Garden (World Premiere Recording, 1986)
  • Carousel (1987)
  • The King and I: 50th Year (1993)
  • Lucky in the Rain (2000)

Compilations

  • The Broadway Years: Till There Was You (1995)
  • Legends of Broadway—Barbara Cook (2006)
Awards
Preceded by
Edie Adams
for Li'l Abner		 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical
1958
for The Music Man		 Succeeded by
Pat Stanley
for Goldilocks

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e Witchel, Alex. "Alone, Again" (reprint), The New York Times, 2005-04-17. Retrieved on 2007-05-18. 
  2. ^ a b Wallace, Mike. "Barbara Cook: Toast of Broadway", CBS News, 2004-06-13. Retrieved on 2007-05-18. 

[edit] External links

Languages