The late Susannah McCorkle was a great
champion of Fran and Simon’s work. "I think this a
magical pairing of lyricist and composer," she said to
her friend the writer Jim Gavin "Isn’t it wonderful
that Fran is doing some of her best work now?" She had
first met Fran when she was living in London in the 1970s and
got back in touch with her after hearing the CD Damned If I
Do. Simon met up with Susannah in 1999 while he was playing
at New York‘s Firebird Cafe and soon after this she included
their song “Scars” in her show “From Broken Hearts
To Blue Skies” at the The Algonquin. In 2000 she recorded
four of their songs and inculed three of them (Down, Feet Do
Your Stuff and Scars) on what was to be her last album “Hearts
and Minds”. She took a keen interest in the new material,
pursuading Fran to customise some of the lyrics for her and
working up some great arrangements with pianist/MD Allen Farnham.One
time when Fran was in New York, Susannah told her of her struggle,
in the ‘80s, to maintain her career while living in Schenectady,
the staid suburban town in upstate New York where her second
husband worked as a newscaster. In response, Fran wrote “Suicide
in Schenectady”, a worst-case scenario of a housewife’s
despair. Susannah loved the song talking about it enthusiastically
in a radio interveiw but saying that she would never dare to
sing it for fear of upsetting her friends back in Schenectardy.
For many years Susannah fought a long battle with depression,
she took her own life on May 19, 2001 aged 55.
www.susannahmccorkle.com
CD available on amazon Hearts
And Minds
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