A follow-up to my post earlier this week on Susannah McCorkle. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/05/24/DD1\ 87499.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, May 24, 2001 (SF Chronicle) In other words, hold my hand Jon Carroll
AT THE UNIVERSITY of California at Berkeley, in the spring of 1962, there were six of us who hung around the editorial offices of the Pelican, then the campus humor magazine. Four of us eventually went into journalism, including the humor writer Bob Wieder. One became a rabbi in Miami; the last I heard of him, he had written a book about weight loss based on Talmudic principles. It was not, apparently, a work of satire. The sixth member of our group surprised us all and became a singer. Two of us are dead now. Dexter Waugh, a reporter for the Examiner, did not take good care of himself and died several years ago. The only woman in our clique, the jazz singer Susannah McCorkle, threw herself out of her apartment window in New York City over the weekend. She was 55. She had just completed an album. She had everything to live for except the desire to live. She left behind a detailed note. She would. She was always trying to be a good girl. She was always trying to please. Down through the years, I got notes and e-mail from her, about how she had finally achieved peace -- in Italy, in London, in New York, on a farm, with someone, without someone. Her melancholy, she would write, was finally lifting. "But I'm really interested in how you're doing." Always so polite. I didn't really want polite. "Your daughters sound so wonderful. I hope I can meet them someday," she would say. But she didn't. She won't. She's dead. As the world knows, she was an amazing interpreter of jazz standards, familiar and obscure. She was her own most severe critic. She once sent me one of her CDs with a note explaining what was wrong with it. I OFTEN WONDERED if she were a prisoner of her own looks. She was a big woman, blond, with a generous nose, a million teeth, a bust so large she got used to men holding conversations with her chest. She had big hands that were rarely still, a tiny speaking voice and two laughs -- a small one when she was being polite and a window-breaking one when she wasn't. She looked like some casting director's idea of a barmaid. Inside, though, she was Sylvia Plath. If she had looked like Sylvia Plath, maybe people would have understood. On the other hand, her looks helped her launch her career. She loved to sing. She loved the music she found. It would be incorrect to say that she never found happiness; she found it every day. NO MORE ANALYSIS; it is God's secret who we are. I'll just tell my favorite Susie story. Sometime in the '60s, I applied for conscientious-objector status. The FBI ran a background check on everyone who made that application. I was asked for a list of friends, and I included Susie. She had the power to mesmerize people, even then. Later, she would use it shamelessly onstage to sell a song. On that day . . . when the FBI agent came to the door, she was baking cookies. She gave him her 1,000-watt smile, her mischievous twinkle -- and handed him an apron. He put it on. I have a witness for all this. For the next hour, the FBI guy rolled out the dough and cut the little cookies and checked the oven. Susie chattered on charmingly. He chattered back. Maybe he thought he was going to get lucky; I dunno. But he kept postponing the interview. Soon he was leaving the house. "About this Jon Carroll," he said. "He's a very sincere young man," said Susie, fixing her large eyes on him. "Ah," said the agent. Her old black magic had him in her spell, that old black magic . . . he didn't want to do it, he didn't want to do it . . . it was great fun, but it was just . . .
- Here's a line I'd like to hear again: I'll be here all this week.
And the ship, the black freighter, raised its jcarroll@s... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2001 SF Chronicle
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