17 years ago an excellent singer committed suicide and that singer was Phyllis Hyman.She was born on July 6,1949 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.She grew up in Pittsburgh. She was in couple bands before being noticed and moving to New York,New York.She worked in clubs and made her first album "Somewhere in My Lifetime" during the late 1970s. Also during that time she began using cocaine ,which led to a life-long dependency.Her first top ten song was "Can't We Fall In Love Again", a duet with Michael Henderson in 1981,which she performed in the Broadway musical Sophisticated Ladies for two years.After that she decided to take a break from Broadway and recording and do something different so she did movie soundtracks, television commercials and guest vocals, working with Chuck Mangione, The Whispers and The Four Tops. She then recorded several other albums until her death in 1995. She committed suicide on June 30,the same day she was supposed to perform at the Apollo Theater, by overdosing on barbiturates. She was found unconscious and taken to the hospital, only to die 3 hours later.She wrote a note before committing suicide that said:
"I'm tired. I'm tired. Those of you that I love know who you are. May God bless you."
She will always be remembered for her voice and the way she sang. I love her voice and her music and I will never forget her. She will be remembered and today in honor of her my quotes will be from her.
"Be nice to take that thing home and put it on my wall - but you know it ain`t even real. Just a record they spray-painted gold. But that`s OK. I`ll take this and be more than thrilled! I`ve been in the business long enough to collect a whole bunch of them suckers!" -Phyllis Hyman
"Oh, I`m a ballad queen for sure... I don`t dig dance stuff very much but I seem to hit the charts with it. Go figure... "-Phyllis Hyman
"You have to persevere...you will get as much out of this business as you put into it."-Phyllis Hyman
No comments:
Post a Comment