Cynthia Gooding (August 12, 1924 – February 10, 1988) was an American
folk singer
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has be ...
who recorded traditional songs from various countries for
Elektra Records
Elektra Records (or Elektra Entertainment) is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group, founded in 1950 by Jac Holzman and Paul Rickolt. It played an important role in the development of contemporary folk and rock music between th ...
in the 1950s and 1960s.
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning seven decades. An Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, she is known for her ...
wrote that she had been "inspired" by her.
Life and career
She was born in
Rochester, Minnesota
Rochester is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Olmsted County. Located on rolling bluffs on the Zumbro River's south fork in Southeast Minnesota, the city is the home and birthplace of the renowned Mayo Clinic.
Ac ...
, and grew up in
Lake Forest, Illinois
Lake Forest is a city located in Lake County, Illinois, United States. Per the 2020 census, the population was 19,367. The city is along the shore of Lake Michigan, and is a part of the Chicago metropolitan area and the North Shore. Lake Forest ...
. In her late teens she lived in
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley of ...
, where she acquired a love of
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has ...
and the
blues, learned
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...
, and developed her talents as a singer and guitar player. On returning to the US in the mid-1940s, she moved to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
, and—encouraged by
Josh White
Joshua Daniel White (February 11, 1914 – September 5, 1969) was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names Pinewood Tom and Tippy Barton in the 1930s.
White grew up in the South ...
—began singing folk songs in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
clubs, particularly with regular appearances at the Soho club and, later,
Gerdes Folk City
Gerdes Folk City, sometimes spelled Gerde's Folk City, was a music venue in the West Village, part of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, in New York City. Initially opened by owner Mike Porco as a restaurant called Gerdes, it eventually began to present ...
. Described as tall and elegant, she developed a following in New York, and her repertoire expanded to include
Turkish as well as
traditional English songs, and
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...
,
Mexican
Mexican may refer to:
Mexico and its culture
*Being related to, from, or connected to the country of Mexico, in North America
** People
*** Mexicans, inhabitants of the country Mexico and their descendants
*** Mexica, ancient indigenous people ...
and
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
folk songs. She married
Turkish-born Hasan Özbekhan in 1949; they divorced in the late 1950s.
After meeting
Jac Holzman
Jac Holzman (born September 15, 1931) is an American music businessman, best known as the founder, chief executive officer and head of record label Elektra Records and Nonesuch Records. Holzman commercially helped launch the CD and home video for ...
, who had recently set up Elektra Records, she recorded four 10-inch
LPs for the label in 1953 and 1954.
[ The cover sleeves were designed by ]Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak (; June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012) was an American author and illustrator of children's books. He became most widely known for his book ''Where the Wild Things Are'', first published in 1963.Turan, Kenneth (October 16, 200 ...
,[ and the albums helped establish Elektra as a source of folk and world music and allowed Holzman to expand into new business premises. "Quality, Selectivity Elektra Watchwords", ''Billboard'', 10 October 1960, p.10]
/ref> Holzman later said:"I met Cynthia Gooding and her husband at one of those folk parties in Greenwich Village, which I sometimes describe as one of those places where there were a lot of wing chairs, candles, bullfight posters, and cheap wine. People would pass the guitar around, and it got passed to her. I was pretty impressed... She was one of the earliest artists I recorded. I remember being leery of someone not indigenous to those cultures singing those songs. I certainly knew the Moorish-Spanish connection, but I was unsure about her accent. I went to a couple of people and they said 'she's pure Castilian,' so that was okay with me. She did everything well. It was fun recording with her."
Retrieved 2 April 2014
On Friday, January 27, 1956, Gooding rented Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall for $100, and presumably performed songs from her Elektra releases in the space. She wrote in the original liner notes
Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the record sleeve, sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for cassettes.
Origin
Liner n ...
that she obtained the songs from various sources, including street musician
Street performance or busking is the act of performing in public places for gratuities. In many countries, the rewards are generally in the form of money but other gratuities such as food, drink or gifts may be given. Street performance is pra ...
s; one of the Mexican songs was " La Bamba," recorded several years before Ritchie Valens
Richard Steven Valenzuela (May 13, 1941 – February 3, 1959), known professionally as Ritchie Valens, was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens was killed ...
' hit version.[ In 1957, material from two of the 10-inch LPs was combined into a single 12-inch album, ''Cynthia Gooding Sings Spanish, Mexican and Turkish Folk Songs''.][ She also released two more LPs that year, ''Cynthia Gooding Sings of Faithful Lovers...'', and ''A Young Man and A Maid: Love Songs of Many Lands'', which included several duets with ]Theodore Bikel
Theodore Meir Bikel ( ; May 2, 1924 – July 21, 2015) was an Austrian-American actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist, and political activist. He appeared in films, including '' The African Queen'' (1951), '' Moulin Rouge'' (1952), ...
. She also released ''Languages of Love'' on the Riverside label in 1958, and the misleadingly titled ''The Best of Cynthia Gooding'' on the Prestige International label the following year.[
In about 1960, she began hosting "Folksinger's Choice", a regular radio program on ]WBAI
WBAI (99.5 FM) is a non-commercial, listener-supported radio station licensed to New York, New York. Its programming is a mixture of political news, talk and opinion from a left-leaning, liberal or progressive viewpoint, and eclectic music. ...
in New York. She made many recordings around Greenwich Village and elsewhere, as research and material for her shows, and in early 1962 conducted the first radio interview with Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
, before his first album was released. Gooding toured nationally, with her two daughters, and traveled to Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' ( Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, ...
where she collected recordings of flamenco music
Flamenco (), in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the gitano subculture of the region of Andalusia, and also having historical presence in Extremadura ...
and befriended musicians including leading
flamenco singer Juan Talega
''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of '' John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanis ...
and guitarist Diego del Gastor
Diego Amaya Flores (March 27, 1908 in Arriate Málaga, Spain – July 7, 1973 in Morón de la Frontera, Sevilla) was a renowned flamenco guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held ...
.[
After returning to the US in 1964, she lived in ]Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...
. She recorded an album of nursery rhyme
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
From ...
s with Don Drake, and in the late 1960s traveled around the US as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
program. She continued to make occasional performances during the 1970s.[
She died of ]cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bl ...
in Kingston, New Jersey
Kingston is an unincorporated community and census designated place (CDP) along the border of South Brunswick Township in Middlesex County and Franklin Township in Somerset County, and also located relatively near Princeton in Mercer Count ...
, in 1988, at the age of 63.[
]
Discography
* ''Cynthia Gooding Sings Turkish and Spanish Folk Songs'' (Elektra, 10", 1953)
* ''Mexican Folk Songs'' (Elektra, 10", 1953)
* ''Queen of Hearts: Early English Folk Songs'' (Elektra, 10", 1953)
* ''Italian Folk Songs'' (Elektra, 10", 1954)
* ''Cynthia Gooding Sings Spanish, Mexican and Turkish Folk Songs'' (Elektra, 1957)
* ''Cynthia Gooding Sings of Faithful Lovers and Other Phenomena'' (Elektra, 1957)
* ''A Young Man And A Maid: Love Songs of Many Lands'' (with Theodore Bikel
Theodore Meir Bikel ( ; May 2, 1924 – July 21, 2015) was an Austrian-American actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist, and political activist. He appeared in films, including '' The African Queen'' (1951), '' Moulin Rouge'' (1952), ...
) (Elektra, 1957)
* ''Languages of Love'' (Riverside, 1958)
* ''The Best of Cynthia Gooding'' (Prestige Int., 1959)
* ''A Treasury of Spanish & Mexican Folk Song'' (Elektra compilation, 1962)
* ''Mother Goose and Father Gander'' (with Don Drake) (Camden, 1965)
[
]
References
External links
Cynthia Gooding at Discogs.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gooding, Cynthia
1924 births
1988 deaths
American folk singers
People from Rochester, Minnesota
Singers from Minnesota
Elektra Records artists
20th-century American singers