Two great voices lost

I was at Shea Stadium for a Mets game one afternoon several years back; that night I took in a different Metropolitan: I was at Lincoln Center for an opera performance. I remember wondering how many people at the Met were also at Shea earlier in the day. Damn few I bet. Likewise I'm guessing there are few music lovers out there who are today mourning equally the loss of two disparate voices: Dame Joan Sutherland and King Solomon Burke. I am very happy that my musical tastes are so catholic; I will miss both of these wildly different artists.

I never saw either of them live. I spent my high school years in the South though and King Solomon was very well known and well represented on WANT, the most popular black radio station in Richmond, Virginia. Likewise, Sutherland was well represented on the Saturday afternoon Met broadcasts, but that pleasure was years away for me.


Burke's first hit was Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms) a country tune that he made his own, while his biggest hit was Cry To Me. My favorite has always been Everybody Needs Somebody To Love. He never achieved the success of Otis Redding or Sam Cooke, but he was the essence of what a great soul singer strived to be. He influenced everyone from Redding to the Rolling Stones. His 2002 autobiographically-titled comeback album Don't Give Up On Me earned him a well-deserved Grammy. I have 77 Solomon Burke tracks in my iTunes library and am working my way through them all. There's not a loser in the bunch.

Joan Sutherland, dubbed La Stupenda by the pickiest opera-goers in the world, the Italian critics, made her Met debut in 1961, singing the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor. It was this role that jump-started my love of opera. I was in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the early 80s and was listening to the Saturday afternoon broadcast. I knew almost nothing about opera, nothing at all about Joan Sutherland. When she began the mad scene I stopped what I was doing, sat down and stared at the speakers, dumbstruck. The voice and the intensity bowled me over. I had never heard singing like that, never heard passion like that, before. I bought the recording that day and have treasured it ever since. Pavarotti called hers “the voice of the century.” You'll get no argument from me. 

---------- F L A S H ---------- 

U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips has just struck down “Don't Ask, Don't Tell.” Brava to her! And shame on Barack Obama for not doing what he promised to do. There's no question in my mind: the world would be a better place if women were in charge!