Ellen Ulken, the author of Beautiful Dreamer, the life of Stephen Collins Foster, is working on a new book.
Coming soon:
Silent Sisters: Profiles of the Lives and Early Deaths of Karen Carpenter, Patsy Cline, Cass Elliot, Ruby Elzy, Janis Joplin, and Selena Quintanilla-Perez.
These American women made enormous impact on their musical arenas. All died tragically before the age of thirty-six.
Karen Carpenter, a drummer/singer from Connecticut and Los Angeles whose gifted brother composed songs for her mesmerizing alto range; Patsy Cline, a country girl from the Shenandoah Valley with a big voice and a quest for stardom; Cass Elliott, a Jewish girl from Baltimore with a love of singing, a velvet voice, and the drive to succeed; Ruby Elzy, a black girl from Mississippi with a devoted mother and the pipes of an angel; Janis Joplin, a cut-up from East Texas determined to be the best white, female, Blues singer in the country; and Selena Quintanilla-Perez, a Texan with Hispanic heritage, and a powerful voice, who grew up singing Tejano music with the family band, and brought their music to the world. These are the subjects of my soon to be finished book, studied through existing biographies and discographies.
Their songs express separate tastes, styles, and ranges. Ruby Elzy sang classical pieces and spirituals. Cass Elliot and Karen Carpenter liked folk music, ballads, and rock and roll. Janis Joplin offered folk, blues and rock and roll. Selena crooned Tejano music mixed with other latin beats and pop. Patsy sang country music, pop, and standards.
They came of age during varying eras of the 20th century. Though Janis, Cass, and Karen were contemporaries, Ruby and Patsy came along earlier and Selena later.
All shared great talent, fearless ambition, devotion to craft, and love of the limelight. All worked, at times, beyond exhaustion. Each had soared to stardom with unlimited prospects for brilliant futures when death intervened. From this angle and through the threads that link them, I reveal these gifted women, their lives and times and their achievements, often in the face of adversarial roadblocks, and contemplate what might have happened for them had they lived longer.
{ 0 comments }
