Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Art-For-Art’s-Sake Theatre: Phoebe Snow (1950-2011)

Time once again for our usual midday Wednesday feature.

American singer, songwriter, and guitarist Phoebe Snow died yesterday, from complications related to a cerebral hemorrhage she suffered this past January. She was 60.

Snow is best known for her 1974 debut single, "Poetry Man," shown here in a 1989 comeback performance. It reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 that year, and earned her a nomination for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. She made ten singles, sixteen albums, three compilations, and was a featured guest on three other singles. For all that, her later years saw were mostly out of the public eye, to care for a severely brain-injured daughter, who died in 2007. She released one live album the following year.

One overlooked aspect of Snow's abilities, was as a guitarist. It is only in recent years that women have been highlighted as instrumentalists in their own right, but in a performance of "Poetry Man" on NBC's Tonight show at the time of its release, the guitar was barely audible, due to a technical oversight by the studio. Thankfully, fewer women have to contend with this today.

Rest in peace.
 

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