Barbara Cook

Barbara Cook, equipped with a warm and light soprano, rose to prominence as a leading performer in Broadway musicals throughout the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1970s she redirected her primary energies toward cabaret work, where she attained equal distinction. Born Barbara Nell in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 25, 1927, she displayed an early passion for singing and took part in children’s productions. At age 14 she captured the ten-dollar prize in an amateur-night competition at Atlanta’s Roxy Theatre by performing “My Devotion.” In February 1948 she journeyed to New York with her mother to launch a musical-theater career. After hearing her audition, composer Vernon Duke suggested she appear at Camp Tamiment, a summer resort in the Poconos; there, in the summer of 1950, she came to the attention of Max Gordon, co-operator with Herbert Jacoby of New York’s Blue Angel nightclub. She made her professional debut at the Blue Angel soon afterward. That engagement led, in 1951, to a featured part in the Broadway musical Flahooley, which featured songs by Sammy Fain and E.Y. Harburg. The production opened May 14, 1951, and closed after forty performances on June 17, yet Capitol Records preserved it on an original-cast album, marking Cook’s first recording.

Following Flahooley’s run, she accepted a second engagement at the Blue Angel. On March 9, 1952, she married actor David LeGrant; the couple divorced in 1965. She returned to Broadway in a City Center revival of Oklahoma!, assuming the featured role of Ado Annie. The limited engagement opened August 31, 1953, played forty performances through October 3, and then embarked on a national tour. Cook next appeared in another City Center revival, Carousel, in which she played the featured role of Carrie Pipperidge. That production opened June 2, 1954, completed seventy-nine performances, and closed August 8. At the same time she performed weekday afternoons in the NBC serial Golden Windows, which premiered July 5, 1954, and continued through April 8, 1955. Also in 1954 she participated in a television presentation of Babes in Toyland.

The accumulating exposure secured her a featured role in her second original Broadway musical, Plain and Fancy. It opened January 27, 1955, became a hit, and ran 461 performances before closing March 3, 1956; Capitol again issued the original-cast album. She subsequently appeared in a television version of Bloomer Girl. Later in 1956 she received her most prestigious assignment to date when cast as Cunegonde in Leonard Bernstein’s musical adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide, which called upon her to deliver the demanding coloratura soprano aria “Glitter and Be Gay.” The show opened December 1, 1956, lasted only seventy-three performances, and closed February 2, 1957, but Columbia Records captured the score on a cast album that sustained interest and encouraged future revivals.

Although the production faltered initially, Cook’s standing grew through her participation. She appeared in a television mounting of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard and then returned to the stage in a City Center revival of Carousel, this time taking the leading role of Julie Jordan. The engagement opened September 11, 1957, ran twenty-four performances, and closed September 29. She promptly moved on to her fourth original Broadway musical and greatest success, playing Marian the librarian in Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. One of the longest-running musicals of its era, the production opened December 19, 1957, and amassed 1,375 performances before closing April 15, 1961. Cook remained with the company through the spring of 1959, departing to give birth to her son Adam LeGrant, who later became a character actor and singer. Onstage and on the Capitol cast album—which topped the charts for twelve weeks and sold a million copies—she performed “Goodnight, My Someone,” “My White Knight,” and “Till There Was You.” She also received the Tony Award for featured actress in a musical, though she was passed over for the film version in favor of Shirley Jones and never established a motion-picture career.

The stardom attained with The Music Man opened further doors. On April 27, 1958, she appeared in an NBC television musical adaptation of Hansel and Gretel with songs by Alec Wilder; MGM Records released the soundtrack album. The independent label Urania signed her and issued two solo collections: Songs of Perfect Propriety (1958), settings of Dorothy Parker poems, and Barbara Cook Sings “From the Heart” (1959), devoted to Rodgers & Hart material. She returned to the stage in a City Center revival of The King & I, assuming the leading role of Anna Leonowens; the run lasted fifteen performances between May 11 and 29, 1960. Her fifth original Broadway musical, The Gay Life, with songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, opened November 18, 1961, and closed after 113 performances on February 24, 1962; Capitol’s cast album reached the Top 100.

In 1962 Cook recorded a studio-cast album of Show Boat for Columbia Records, singing the leading role of Magnolia. Her sixth appearance in a new musical came with She Loves Me; the Jerry Bock–Sheldon Harnick score opened April 23, 1963, completed 301 performances, and closed January 11, 1964. MGM released the double-LP cast recording, which reached the Top 20. In 1964 she made another studio-cast album for Columbia, this time returning to The King & I. Her seventh original Broadway musical, Something More!, with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman, played only fifteen performances between November 10 and 21, 1964, and received no recording. In 1965 she ventured into non-musical theater, replacing Sandy Denny in the straight play Any Wednesday, and issued a single titled “Any Wednesday” on Summit Records. During the summer of 1966 she starred in a Music Theater of Lincoln Center revival of Show Boat that enjoyed a limited New York engagement of sixty-four performances from July 19 to September 10 before touring; RCA Victor recorded the cast album.

Cook returned to Broadway in Jules Feiffer’s straight play Little Murders, which opened April 25, 1967, and ran for a single week, although a later off-Broadway mounting proved far more successful. Four years elapsed before her next Broadway appearance; during that interval she performed in regional revivals including Funny Girl. When she created her eighth role in a new Broadway musical, it was in The Grass Harp, which opened November 2, 1971, and closed after seven performances on November 6; the Painted Smiles label issued the cast album. In 1972 she acted in Gorky’s straight play Enemies. The following year she toured in the musical revue The Gershwin Years, which consisted solely of George Gershwin songs and required her to portray no character other than herself.

Approaching her mid-forties and confronting diminishing offers for Broadway musicals, she reassessed her path and chose to resume nightclub and concert work. In the summer of 1974 she accepted an engagement at the small supper club Brothers and Sisters in New York’s theater district, accompanied solely by pianist Wally Harper, who remained her collaborator for the next thirty years. The booking led to representation by concert impresario Herbert H. Breslin and, on January 26, 1975, to a Carnegie Hall debut, followed by appearances at the Hollywood Bowl, the Kennedy Center, and leading nightclubs nationwide. In this manner she inaugurated an equally successful new chapter of her career.

Columbia Records captured the Carnegie Hall concert and released it in 1975 as her third solo album and first in sixteen years, Barbara Cook at Carnegie Hall. She followed it in 1977 with the studio LP As of Today. Her 1981 return to Carnegie Hall was documented on It’s Better with a Band, issued by the Moss Music Group. On September 6, 1985, she took a featured role in a concert presentation of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies at Avery Fisher Hall; the resulting RCA Victor double album received the 1986 Grammy Award for Best Musical Cast Show Album. Beyond individual concerts she occasionally mounted extended one-woman shows. In September 1986 she appeared in London’s West End in Wait ’Til You See Her, and on April 15, 1987, she began a thirteen-performance run at Broadway’s Ambassador Theater in Barbara Cook: A Concert for the Theatre, an engagement that earned her a Drama Desk Award.

Also in 1987 she participated in an MCA Classics studio-cast recording of Carousel, again singing Julie Jordan. In 1988 she made another studio-cast album, a musical version of The Secret Garden released by Columbia—an entirely separate work from the later Lucy Simon–Marsha Norman Broadway musical of the same title. That same year she briefly joined the Royal Shakespeare Company’s musical adaptation of the novel and film Carrie, intended as her first Broadway return in seventeen years, but withdrew before the production reached New York, where it closed after five performances in May. In December 1988 MCA Classics issued her first solo album in six years, The Disney Album, a collection of songs from Walt Disney films.

By the early 1990s Cook was performing regularly at upscale venues such as the Café Carlyle in Manhattan’s Carlyle Hotel, where she enjoyed repeated engagements. In 1993 she signed with the theater-oriented independent label DRG and released Close as Pages in a Book, her first solo album in five years and a tribute to lyricist Dorothy Fields. In 1994 her voice appeared in the animated film Thumbelina and on its SBK Records soundtrack album; she also issued a second DRG solo album, Live from London. Oscar Winners: The Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II followed in 1997, then All I Ask of You in 1999. Later that year DRG released The Champion Season: A Salute to Gower Champion, documenting her most recent nightclub act at the Café Carlyle. In 2000 she drew inspiration from a list Stephen Sondheim compiled for his seventieth birthday of songs he wished he had written, constructing the show Mostly Sondheim, which she presented at Carnegie Hall; DRG recorded the performance for a 2001 album and, in 2003, issued a video of its Kennedy Center run. Also in 2003 DRG released her Christmas album Count Your Blessings.

On New Year’s Eve 2003, at age 76, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as a special guest in the final-act party scene of The Merry Widow. Following the house’s tradition of allowing such guests to perform their own repertoire, she offered a brief set comprising “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” “A Wonderful Guy” from South Pacific, a medley of Rodgers & Hart’s “He Was Too Good to Me” and Sondheim’s “Losing My Mind,” and, unamplified, “We’ll Be Together Again.” New York Times reviewer Anthony Tommasini noted that she sang “splendidly” and observed, “That her soft voice carried so truly was a testimony to her incomparable vocal technique and clear diction.”

Her subsequent one-woman show, Barbara Cook’s Broadway!, played the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center during the spring of 2004; DRG recorded it for an album released May 25, 2004. In the retrospective she performed material from The Music Man, Carousel, She Loves Me, and Follies, together with songs from productions in which she had not appeared. In October 2004 her longtime accompanist Wally Harper died. Her next album, recorded in June 2005 and issued September 6, 2005, was appropriately titled Tribute and dedicated to Harper. On January 20, 2006, she returned to the Metropolitan Opera for a full-length concert accompanied by guests Audra McDonald and Josh Groban—the first such event ever presented by the house for a non-classical female soloist. DRG captured the evening and released it as Barbara Cook at the Met with Special Guests on June 6, 2006.

Cook appeared at Carnegie Hall once more for an 85th-birthday concert in 2012. New York Times critic Tommasini again praised her enduring command: “Long ago Ms. Cook figured out what really matters in singing: to put lyrics across as if she were confiding in you, to bend melodic phrases to expressive ends, to inflect her sound with heartache, happiness, sass, bitterness or whatever the moment calls for.” In August 2017 Barbara Cook died at age 89 at her home in Manhattan.