Oh, Phoebe

A beautiful voice from Plotnik's Big Zapple days has died and this one hurts. Phoebe Snow was 58, had dropped out of the music scene to raise her disabled daughter and never really came back. But Phoebe had one of those unforgettable voices, didn't she?

You could not confuse her with anyone else. Plotnik always thought she sounded like Billie Holiday would have if Billie had been a Jewish kid from Teaneck, New Jersey -- with that rare sadness that thickens each note. With Phoebe Snow there was never a throwaway line, no phrase that only served to get her someplace else. Every note counted. You don't teach that. It's a gift.

Here's a U-Tube link of the song "Harpo's Blues" that was the flip side of "Poetry Man."

Does 'flip side' mean anything to anybody? Do you remember that there used to be single 45rpm records released, that you played on your record player, and that these records had two sides, and even if the radio only played "Poetry Man," and it became a hit, if you bought the single you really got two songs to listen to -- the hit and the other one, the one nobody knew except the people who bought the record.

And if you were the songwriter, children, you got paid just as much for the song nobody heard as for the one everybody hummed in the shower. As a result, the flip side was often written by the performer's sister or cousin or someone the producer owed a favor to.

Not here. Phoebe wrote everything. Here's Poetry Man.

Talk to me tonight
You don't have to go
You're the Poetry Man
You make everything all right

When Plotnik dreams of the singer he would like to be some day, when he grows up, in that next life where we get to pick and choose, he has always thought he'd like to be Wilson Pickett or Teddy Pendergrass or maybe Aretha Franklin or Sam Cooke -- someone who could shout it down as well as lift it up. But a voice like Phoebe Snow's would be fine, you know? To have a way to touch people where they live, not with the intellect that songwriters must use, but into the true heart where singers get to play around -- that'd be nice.

She was 'way too young, if you ask me.