Phoebe Laub.
You’ve heard her unmistakable, comfortable voice in the background of TV ads… but not because she wasn’t “good" or talented enough to be on the charts… she voluntarily exited a busy performer’s career in order to care for her daughter, Valerie Rose, who was born with hydrocephalus, the result of medical malpractice,
and who died at 31, never once having lived without her mother by her side.
Phoebe’s voice was unique and unparalleled — touching. 4 octaves — #4 on the Billboard album charts — a top 5 hit on the singles charts in 1975, with “Poetry Man”. But who noted “earmarks” while listening to Phoebe warble? Drifting easily through genres, if ever there was a voice as soothing and as calming as a first snowfall, it was Phoebe’s. Her pseudonym surname, aptly, if randomly chosen.
And her talent for song writing was as personal and accessible as her ability to inhabit a tune…proof that “ya gotta have heart” to get into the heads of listeners "to make things all rhyme"… hers was HUGE, and she carried her daughter’s world in it. Kudos to Phoebe for making her heart her world. Last impressions count.
Laub garnered success purely as the “undriven” Phoebe Snow — the “consummate artist as human being” — not a contradiction in terms — nor unfortunately, a category hailed by the Grammies — by which she was once nominated as best new artist and afterwards ignored.
Phoebe Snow: silent. April 26, 2011.