A file picture of singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.
LOS ANGELES: Eydie Gorme, a popular nightclub and television singer who performed as a solo act and as a team with her husband, Steve Lawrence, has died. She was 84.
Gorme, who also had a huge solo hit in 1963 with “Blame It on the Bossa Nova,” died on Saturday at Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas after a brief, undisclosed illness, her publicist, Howard Bragman, said.
Gorme was a successful band singer and nightclub entertainer when she was invited to join the cast of Steve Allen‘s local New York television show in 1953.
She sang solos and performed duets and comedy skits with Lawrence, a rising young singer who joined the show a year earlier. When the programme became NBC‘s “Tonight Show” in 1954, the young couple went with it.
They married in Las Vegas in 1957 and later performed for audiences there. Lawrence, the couple’s son David and other loved ones were by her side when she died, Bragman said.
“Eydie has been my partner onstage and in life for more than 55 years,” Lawrence said in a statement. “I fell in love with her the moment I saw her, and even more the first time I heard her sing. While my personal loss is unimaginable, the world has lost one of the greatest pop vocalists of all time.”
Although usually recognised for her musical partnership with Lawrence, Gorme broke through on her own with the Grammy-nominated “Blame It on the Bossa Nova.” The bouncy tune about a dance craze at the time was written by the Tin Pan Alley songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
Her husband had had an equally huge solo hit in 1962 with “Go Away Little Girl,” written by the songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King.
She scored another solo hit in 1964, but this time for a Spanish-language recording.
Gorme, who was born in New York City to Sephardic Jewish parents, grew up speaking English and Spanish. When she and her husband were at the height of their career as a team in 1964, the president of Columbia Records, Goddard Lieberson, suggested she put that Spanish to use in the recording studio.
The result was “Amor,” recorded with the Mexican combo Trio Los Panchos.
The song became a hit throughout Latin America, which resulted in more recordings for the Latino market, and Lawrence and Gorme performed as a duo throughout Latin America.
“Our Spanish stuff outsells our English recordings,” Lawrence said in 2004. “She’s like a diva to the Spanish world.”
The couple had an impressive career in English-language music, as well, encompassing recordings and appearances on TV, in nightclubs and in concert halls.
AP
