Suzanne Sutton Posted May 12, 2010 Share Posted May 12, 2010 Lena Horne Dies "Stormy Weather" was her signature song as well as a chillingly apt metaphor for her career. Long celebrated for her striking beauty and silky voice, she overcame profound racism on her way to becoming one of the best-known African American performers in the country. Lena, whose career spanned more than 60 years, died May 9, 2010 of heart failure at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornel Medical Center. She was 92 (born in 1917). She made "inroads into a world that had never before been explored by African American women, and she did it on her own terms," Grammy-winning producer Quincy Jones said in a statement. He called her "one of the great artistic icons of the 20th century." To help out her family during the Depression, Horne got a job as a 16-year-ole chorus girl in 1933 at the fabled Cotton Club in Harlem. She went on to have a career that included film, television, Grammy-winning records, a one-woman Broadway show and untold nightclub appearances. As a singer, she "belonged to the pantheon of great female artists" that includes Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah vaughan and Carmen McRae, jazz critic Don Heckman wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1997. She was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1984. As she said in Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice: "My life has been about surviving. Along the way I also became an artist. It's an interesting journey. One in which music became my refuge and then my salvation." Besides her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, she is survived by 5 granedchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. --Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2010. Suzanne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted May 13, 2010 Members Share Posted May 13, 2010 Yeah I saw that the other day. She was something else. She'll be missed that's for sure, but who isn't missed when they die. pk Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suzanne Sutton Posted May 17, 2010 Author Share Posted May 17, 2010 Singing Praises of Lena Horne Lena Horne, whose signature song was Stormy Weather, was remembered at her funeral on May 14, 2010 as a shy girl from Brooklyn who fought racism for decades to emerge as a world-class singer and social activist. "She was so many ideas existing all at the same time in the same space and they were all conflicting and they were all true," her granddaughter, Jenny Lumet, told hundreds of mourners at the Church of St. Ignatitus Loyola in Manhattan. They included fellow entertainers Chita Rivera, Diahann Carroll, Dionne Warwich, Cicely Tyson and Jinji Nicole. --Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2010. Suzanne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 17, 2010 Share Posted May 17, 2010 She had a long and full life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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