By Keith Thursby, Los Angeles Times

April 26, 2011, 8:27 a.m.
Phoebe Snow, a singer and songwriter who gained fame with her 1974 self-titled album that featured the hit single "Poetry Man," has died. She was 60.

Snow died Tuesday in Edison, N.J., her longtime friend and public relations representative, Rick Miramontez, said. She had suffered a brain hemorrhage in January 2010.

The album "Phoebe Snow" turned the singer, blessed with multi-octave range, into a star. She made the cover of Rolling Stone, appeared on "Saturday Night Live" and was nominated for a Grammy Award.

"Phoebe Snow has made it," Stephen Holden wrote in a 1975 review for Rolling Stone. "On a musical level she shows the potential of becoming a great jazz singer. Among confessional pop songwriters she immediately ranks with the finest."

Rolling Stone described her nine original compositions in "Phoebe Snow" as "light jazz torch songs" but freer in form and attitude. (Two other songs on the album were her versions of others' material).

Snow was hard to categorize musically; a Times reviewer early in her career called her style "a helter skelter amalgam of pop, jazz, blues, gospel and folk." She explained to the New York Times in 2003, "No creative person should ever produce the same thing over and over."

Dennis Hunt, writing in the Los Angeles Times in 1976, said her voice had "a marvelous 'cracked' quality" and she "glides through and glances off notes in an appealing offbeat manner."

But Snow was never able to duplicate her early commercial success. Her career took a backseat to caring for her daughter, Valerie Rose Laub, who was born in 1975 with severe brain damage.

"It was very, very tight," Snow told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008. "Occasionally I put an album out, but I didn't like to tour and they didn't get a lot of label support. But you know what? It didn't really matter because I got to stay home more with Valerie and that time was precious."

She sang commercial jingles for such companies as Stouffer's and General Foods, which she said paid well.

Her daughter died in 2007. A few months later, Snow started performing again, trying to deal with her loss.

"Right now it's beyond a hole. It's a black hole," she told the Record of Bergen County, N.J., in 2008. "I don't even know how to describe that vacancy because it was such an intense relationship. We lived together for 31 years. She was a perennial child. I was her primary caregiver. … We were best friends. It was beyond a loss. I don't even know what word to use."

Snow was born Phoebe Laub on July 17, 1950, in New York City and grew up in Teaneck, N.J. As a youngster she studied piano, then switched to the guitar.

"I always wanted to be the greatest woman guitarist alive," she told The Times in 1976. "I had fantasies about being a female Jimi Hendrix. I would go to his concerts and watch all the things he did. But I guess I just wasn't meant to be a superstar guitarist."

Taking guitar lessons affected her singing style.

"I finally said, 'I can't play these guitar lines but maybe I can sing them.' I tried to sing the way a guitar sounds and the way a saxophone sounds too."

Her poetry became the basis of her lyrics, and she started playing at New York clubs. She signed with Shelter Records in 1974.

She moved to Columbia Records in 1976 after sometimes nasty legal wrangling with Shelter. "Second Childhood" earned her a second gold record, but subsequent Columbia releases did not sell as well. She left the label at the end of the 1970s.

After being quiet most of the 1980s, Snow recorded a comeback album in 1989's "Something Real" for Elektra.

Her most recent album was "Phoebe Snow — Live" in 2008.

"I faded away for a while out of necessity," she told The Times in 1998. "In hindsight, I missed out on some good or productive years. On the other hand … I really made the only choice I could under the circumstances."

A sad but empowering story, and a real loss. RIP.

huh..never heard of her. RIP none the less

RIP Phoebe!

Mick Taylor played in her album "Something Real"

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lettingitbleed
huh..never heard of her. RIP none the less

Gone at Last by Paul Simon with her sharing the vocals

Wasn't "Poetry Man" supposed to be about Jackson Browne?


What a shame. God bless her for being such a good mom. RIP

Godspeed Phoebe .

A wonderful talent...1980's (1981?) Rock Away is very good. It has covers of Rod Stewart/Ron Wood's Gasoline Alley and Mercy, Mercy, Mercy. She put her career on the backburner to care for her daughter.

Great voice great lost R.I.P





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boston2006
Godspeed Phoebe .

Always thought this was beautiful. It wouldn't be a hit now. It's too damn good.

Timeless I would say...............great tatters to bring this song up again

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A sadly underrated powerful vocalist. Here's a terrific Beatles cover she did:

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What a great uplifting personal story. Sad, but somehow triumphant.
I didn't know about the MT connection! "Poetry Man" was absolutely sublime.....still is. And Tatters, you are correct, I can't imagine something this ethereal-sounding as a hit today. I remember her appearance with Linda Ronstadt on SNL from the late 70s.
Great artist. If you don't know her, check her out....she was truly original.

Very Sad News, always remembered this one -

Maybe she's in a better place. Maybe not feeling pain is a better place. Rest in Peace.

Yeah a bummer,did"nt she do a great version of Paul Mcartneys "tonight"