One of my Favourite Female Singers

I like music, all types of music, provided it's good. I remember a famous classical musician whose name I have forgotten once said:"There are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music", not classical, pop, jazz, Chinese, Latin, Western etc.  Just before dinner, I took out a CD I haven't played for a while when my eyes accidentally fell on it. I clicked on the remote. It brought back a flood of memories. The CD's full of little gems. It's called "Portraits",  by Amanda McBroom, released in 1999.

Here's a song in that CD that I love. I could never get enough of it. Here are the lyrics:

                        The Portrait

There's a picture in a silver frame
Hanging dusty on my wall, And two people, with their eyes the same,
Holding daisies, I recall.
And the baby in the sailor dress
And the pigtails....that was me.
And the other was my mother
On our Easter by the sea.

People tell me that I'm just like her
And I wonder what they see.
She was a lady, lace and cameo,
Not the gypsy that is me.
She spent her evening making poetry,
I spend my nights making time.
And I wonder, am I living
Partly her dreams, partly mine.

What would she think of the too many men?
The lies I get lost in again and again?
The tears in the morning
The booze and the blues in the night?

It's been years now, since I've seen her face.
Heard her footsteps on the stair.
But just lately, in my dreams at night,
I will call her and she's there,
Looking pretty, like she used to
Before time and tears tore her apart.
And she tells me that she loves me.
Then she leaves me in the dark.

Mama, don't leave me, Mama don't go
You know the answers to all I don't know.
My dreams come up empty
And my heart's lying dead on the floor.

Mama, don't leave me. Mama, please stay.
Mama, I need you to show me the way.
I'm lost and I'm lonely
And I can't find my way anymore.

Mama...mama...

Of course, there are other songs in that album that I like e.g. " The Rose", "Dreaming", "Errol Flynn", "Crimes of the Heart", "Ship in a Bottle", "Best Friend", "Here and Now", "Make me a Kite" everyone of which is a delight to hear. I like the way she sings. She has a very very versatile voice, which can sing with feeling, with gusto, with nostalgia, with melancholy, with joy. She excels in those difficult cabaret songs with an easy jazzy rhythm which are half sung and half spoken and that kind of style made famous by Frank Sinatra. She can also do the kind of Louis Armstrong vibrating phlegm-in-the throat style of singing if required .She can do that because she's a veteran singer with more than 20 years of Broadway theatre and cabaret behind her. She started out in 1980 with that perennial "The Rose". She loves acting and has appeared in Heartbeats in 1989 in LA which ran for 15 years. I first heard her when she sang in the album "Amanda McBrook Live at the Rainbow" and instantly fell in love with her and proceeded to get every one of her available CDs in Hong Kong. I have never since regretted doing so, not even once. And I love her lyrics, which are always thoughtful and touching.