Lesley
Gore, who was a teenager in the 1960s when she recorded hit songs about
heartbreak and resilience that went on to become feminist touchstones,
died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 68.
Lois Sasson, her partner of 33 years, said Ms. Gore died of lung cancer at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
With songs like “It’s My Party,” “Judy’s Turn to Cry” and the indelibly defiant 1964 single “You Don’t Own Me”
— all recorded before she was 18 — Ms. Gore made herself the voice of
teenage girls aggrieved by fickle boyfriends, moving quickly from
tearful self-pity to fierce self-assertion.
“You
Don’t Own Me,” written by John Madara and David White, originally
reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. It has been repeatedly
rerecorded and revived by performers including Dusty Springfield, Joan
Jett and the cast of the 1996 movie “The First Wives Club.”
“When I heard it for the first time, I thought it had an important humanist quality,” Ms. Gore told The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
in 2010. “As I got older, feminism became more a part of my life and
more a part of our whole awareness, and I could see why people would use
it as a feminist anthem. I don’t care what age you are — whether you’re
16 or 116 — there’s nothing more wonderful than standing on the stage
and shaking your finger and singing, ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’ ”
Ms.
Gore was born Lesley Sue Goldstein on May 2, 1946, in Brooklyn. She
grew up in Tenafly, N.J., eager to become a singer. She had just turned
16, a junior in high school, when her vocal coach had her make some
piano-and-voice recordings. Those demos, with a youthful brightness in
her voice, reached the producer Quincy Jones, who was then an A&R
man at Mercury Records. He became her producer and mentor.
Ms.
Gore recorded “It’s My Party” on March 30, 1963, and when Mr. Jones
discovered that Phil Spector and the Crystals were also recording the
song, he rush-released it within a week. It reached No. 1 and was
followed onto the charts by “Judy’s Turn To Cry” — a sequel to “It’s My
Party” that gets the boyfriend back — and other tales of teen romance
like “She’s a Fool,” “That’s the Way Boys Are” and “Maybe I Know,” as
well as “You Don’t Own Me.”
Ms.
Gore was featured — with James Brown, the Rolling Stones, the Supremes
and Marvin Gaye — in the 1964 concerts at the Santa Monica Civic
Auditorium that were documented as the “T.A.M.I. Show.”
She also had moderate hits with some of the first Marvin Hamlisch songs
to be recorded: “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” in 1965 and
“California Nights” in 1967.
Yet
at the peak of her pop career Ms. Gore was in school full time,
majoring in English and American literature at Sarah Lawrence College in
Bronxville, N.Y., where she graduated in 1968. She played an occasional
television show or concert on weekends or during vacations. “It
would be very foolish of me to leave school to go into such an
unpredictable field on a full-time basis,” she told an interviewer at
the time.
Ms.
Gore’s string of hits ended when girl-group pop gave way to
psychedelia. But she kept performing — in movies, on television, on
theater and club stages. She appeared in the 1960s “Batman” television
series as the Pink Pussycat, one of Catwoman’s sidekicks.
Ms.
Gore did not write her early hits. But after she was dropped by
Mercury, she worked on becoming a songwriter. She moved to California in
1970, and her 1972 album, “Someplace Else Now,” was full of songs she
wrote herself or with the lyricist Ellen Weston.
She
reconnected with Mr. Jones for the 1975 album “Love Me by Name,” also
filled with her own songs and drawing on guest performers including
Herbie Hancock. But it, too, was largely ignored, as was “The Canvas Can
Do Miracles,” an album of versions of 1970s pop hits released in 1982.
“Out Here on My Own,”
a song Ms. Gore wrote with her brother, Michael Gore, for the
soundtrack of the movie “Fame,” became a hit for Irene Cara in 1980 and
was nominated for an Academy Award.
Ms. Gore lived in New York City. Besides Ms. Sasson, she is survived by her brother and her mother, Ronny Gore.
Ms.
Gore returned to New York City in 1980 and continued to sing her oldies
on the nostalgia circuit. She also performed in musical theater,
including a stint in the Broadway production of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe.” She
worked in television, hosting episodes of “In the Life,” a PBS
newsmagazine series about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
In 2005, she came out publicly as gay.
Her
2005 album, “Ever Since,” was full of reflective grown-up songs in
cabaret style, along with a bitterly moody remake of “You Don’t Own Me.”
Television shows picked up some of its tracks: “Better Angels” was
heard on “C.S.I.,” and “Words We Don’t Say” was played on “The L Word.”
Ms. Gore was a headliner in 2011 at “She’s Got The Power,”
a Lincoln Center Out of Doors concert devoted to the girl-group era. In
2012, “You Don’t Own Me” returned during the presidential election, as a
feminist get-out-the-vote video. As it begins, Ms. Gore appears, announcing, “I’m Lesley Gore, and I approve this message.”
In recent years, Ms. Gore had been working on a memoir and a Broadway show based on her life.
By JON PARELES New York Times
