Eartha Kitt, Micheál MacLÃammóir, Orson Welles
I’m proud of the fact that two of her songs are on my Top 25 Most Played on my iPod. Nobody like her. NOBODY.
My parents saw her a couple years ago at the Newport Jazz Festival. She wasn’t a day over 156 years old.
Also, Mitchell saw her perform and she, at one point, cuddled up on his lap. I adore her.
My two favorites of hers are not her most famous, perhaps, and I had a hard time finding a clip of her performing them on Youtube. But if you don’t know them, do yourself a favor and check out her renditions of “Beale St. Blues” and “A Woman Wouldn’t Be a Woman”. I’d call them two of the best makeout songs of all time, first of all. And again: there’s just no one like her. Nobody else would make the choices she makes … they are so completely hers … and she makes it all work. Through commitment and specificity.
God, I loved her.
Clip below (insanely weird. The set, the costume, the fact that there is no closeup of her until more than halfway through … I MISS television like that – it’s like a drug trip or a bad dream) … of her singing “I’m Just an Old-Fashioned Girl”.
Watch her gesture and her expression when she sings the words “hers and hers”. That’s specific. And the big smile at the end kills me. Because she lets us know that she’s in on the joke. The joke is on us. Lovely.
We all know her heart belonged to Daddy, but there’s a space in my heart reserved for her.
Rest in peace, Eartha. You were one of a kind.
oh sheil!!!!…my two favorites as well…odetta and eartha…what a show thats gonna be…sing ladies, sing!
“a rag and a bone and a … HANK of hair …”
seriously. I guess it says something about me that I find that to be awesome bump and grind music, but I do.
She will be missed! She was working right up to the end!
That “rag and a bone” quote is what we call Gabrielle Anwar’s Fiona over on the TWoP boards for “Burn Notice.” Hee. (Eat a cheeseburger, girl!)
I’m really upset about this. I’m really just plain sad she’s not on the planet anymore.
Alex – I know!
If she were starting out today – her career would not be possible.
I mean, even back then her career seems impossible.
Who can she even be compared to? I’m coming up blank. You would never EVER mistake her for someone else!
exactly my point.an original thru and thru…”a rag and a bone and a hank a’hair”…what????
Oh man, I’m really upset about this. Well, maybe ‘upset’ is the wrong word, she was elderly, she had a long and fruitful career behind her etc, but I’m still gonna miss her something awful. She’s always been there at the back of my mind. Like, when I was a kid I was OBSESSED with the film of Harriet the Spy, where she plays the creepy old rich lady. I used to love her insane cackle in that film. Then I got a little older and realised she’d voiced on of THE great Disney characters of my childhood, Yzma in The Emperor’s New Groove. Then I started listening to her music, catching her in old tv shows etc…damn. THAT voice.