Grammy nominated blues singer/songwriter Phoebe Snow is dead at the age of 60 resulting from complications with a brain hemorrhage. Though perhaps little regarded today, Snow was a formidable force in her heyday during one of the most tumultuously changing times in music, the mid 70s, during which her biggest hit Poetry Man hit #1 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart and garnered her her first and only Grammy nomination. She was featured on Rolling Stone soon after and became a regular performer on Saturday Night Live, even appearing seven months pregnant in one segment. This pregnancy proved to be the most pivotal and degrading force on her career, the birth resulted in a severely stunted daughter, Valerie, who she vowed to raise outside of an institution. Parental ties consumed her time and her career suffered, resulting in less time spent in the studio and more time at home, she would chart again only sporadically and never as highly as with her early career, most notably with a hit in 1983, recording Games with members of Billy Joel’s band. She appeared numerous times singing on the Howard Stern Radio Show in her later career and toured extensively over the years. She’s performed with some of the greatest artists in modern music history including; Lou Rawls, Paul Simon, Queen, Cyndi Lauper, Chaka Kahn, and Thelma Houston. She was as Rolling Stone said, in not so many words, one of the greatest diamonds in the rough in the music business, technically and stylistically excellent, gifted with a golden voice, she had only to channel that talent. She will be sorely missed.
