Barbara Cook

Barbara Cook is an American singer and actress who first came to prominence in the 1950s after starring in the original Broadway musicals Plain and Fancy , Candide and The Music Man among others, winning a Tony Award for the last. She continued performing mostly in theatre until the mid1970s, when she began a second career that continues to this day as a cabaret and concert singer. She has also made numerous recordings.

Cook was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of Nell and Charles Bunyan. Her father was a traveling hat salesman and her mother was an operator for Southern Bell. Her parents divorced when she was a child and, after her only sister died of whooping cough, Barbara lived alone with her mother. She later described their relationship as so close, too close. I slept with my mother until I came to New York. Slept in the same bed with her. Thats just, its wrong. But to me, it was the norm....As far as she was concerned, we were one person. Though Barbara began singing at an early age, at the Elks Club and to her father over the phone, she spent three years after graduating from high school working as a typist.

Source: Wikipedia