Phoebe Snow

Renowned for her elastic contralto and jazz scat vocal gymnastics, singer Phoebe Snow entered the world as Phoebe Laub on July 17, 1952, in New York City. Growing up in Teaneck, New Jersey, she first took up piano before turning to guitar during her teenage years, when the poetry she composed began evolving into original songs. After conquering her stage fright, she started performing in Greenwich Village clubs during the early 1970s, refining a wide-ranging repertoire that blended folk and pop with jazz, blues, and torch material.

She joined Leon Russell’s Shelter label and released her self-titled debut album in 1974. Powered by the Top Five hit “Poetry Man,” the record climbed to number four on the charts. A subsequent tour alongside Paul Simon led to her featured appearance on his hit “Gone at Last.” Returning to the studio, she delivered the gold-certified Second Childhood in 1976, another strong commercial success. A burst of further releases followed through the rest of the decade—It Looks Like Snow and Never Letting Go in 1977, then Against the Grain in 1978—before she largely withdrew from the spotlight with the arrival of the 1980s. After issuing Rock Away in 1981, she remained silent on record for the next eight years.

She reemerged on Elektra with Something Real in 1989 and joined ex-Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen’s all-star New York Rock and Soul Revue for a run of New York club dates. Beyond contributing vocals to numerous radio and television commercials, she stayed largely out of the public eye until 1994, when she joined a gospel ensemble featuring Mavis Staples, CeCe Peniston, and Thelma Houston for an appearance at Woodstock. Three more albums arrived across the late 1990s and 2000s: I Can’t Complain in 1998, Natural Wonder in 2003, and Live in Woodstock in 2008. Following a brain hemorrhage in 2010, Snow died the next April.