Kate McGarrigle, who died in January.
The McGarrigle Sisters had their breakthrough as performers with Kate and Anna McGarrigle. That’s still most people’s favourite album, certainly it’s mine.
Sentimental, adolescent, breathy, hoky, they say. Sure, I say, but who cares. Here’s ‘Gentle Annie’ from The McGarrigle Hour.
The sisters made very few rules for themselves: if they liked a song, they sang it, and if it didn’t happen to be a folksong, too bad. So they sang all sorts of things, musical hall songs, French-Canadian popular songs, even cabaret, and perennials from writers like Stephen Foster: “Gentle Annie” dates from1856. They were raised singing some of this repertory, and they tried to recreate that family-round-the-piano atmosphere in their delivery and arrangements and in whole albums like The McGarrigle Hour. On that CD they’re joined by, amongst others their friends Linda Ronstadt and Emmy-Lou Harris, Kate’s children Martha and Rufus Wainwright and Kate’s ex-husband, Loudon Wainwright. So the songs of their childhood became the songs of their present and the family of origin became the family in the present, broken-but-intact. Read the rest of this entry »
