McCorkle Susannah

American jazz singer, prolific though not too commercially successful. Brainy, warm, and funny, McCorkle belonged to an exclusive coterie of American singers: she performed in the best rooms, recorded 19 albums, and enjoyed more than two decades of acclaim from the jazz press as well as the devotion of fans around the world. McCorkles was an intimate art; when she sang, you felt there was no one else in the room but you and the singer. She fixed you with a gimlet eye and a generous smile that connected and didnt let go. If she noticed you at more than one performance, often as not shed join you for a drink after the set and want to hear everything that had gone on in your life since the last time, and you would be enchanted by pungent, self-deprecating tales of what was happening in hers. Everyone was stunned when she jumped to her death from her sixteenth-floor apartment on West 86th street at age 55. She wrote a rare confession via e-mail to a friend shortly before her death, that she was going through a total loss of confidence in herself, the book she was working on and her record company putting out a compilation instead of a new album. She wrote, ""Ive been having a really rough time. Feeling totally immobilized. Cant even listen to music, except classical. Avoiding people so word wont get around how down I am." Offstage, she was expert at hiding the depression that would eventually drain her of the will to live. To her family, it seemed as if the only time McCorkle clearly expressed her feelings was when she was performing. "She was very wide-open and truthful when she sang," says her mother, Mimi. "I got to know what she was thinking because she was telling me." McCorkles sister Maggie felt the same way. "When Susannah was singing, she let her emotions show and she was happy," she said. "It always made me cry. It was the only time she ever spoke to us in a direct way." Her battle with depression, for which she had sought help from an array of doctors, nutritionists, shrinks, homeopaths, and medications, had left her in despair. Part of the problem, says a mental-health professional who knew her well, was that like many other manic-depressives, she was unable to accept the fact that she needed ongoing medication to remain stable. "She was bipolar II, manic-depressive -- that was in her genes," this person says. "She had to take meds to balance out the chemistry. But she didnt want to be in that category. She would refer to other family members who were on antidepressants and say that she didnt want to be like them." An unopened vial of a newly prescribed antidepressant were found on a table the morning after she jumped to her death. Her father suffered from bipolar disorder and was a suicide, as was her mothers sister. McCorkles older sister is schizophrenic. When Susannah was a student at Berkeley, her father was hospitalized following a mental breakdown; she told a therapist she felt obligated to drop out of school and get a job to support her family. The therapist replied that her financial help was not going to save anyone. "Youre living in a burning building," she later recalled him saying. "Get out." And she did, quite literally, adopting the life of an expatriate in Paris, Rome, and London, building a singing career characterized by elegance, impeccable arrangements, and rare musical intelligence. Her distinctive style -- at once sophisticated, sexy, and touchingly sincere -- had earned her three Stereo R Read less