Phyllis Hyman

Phyllis Linda Hyman was born on July 6, 1949, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the eldest of seven children born to Phillip Hyman, a World War II veteran, and Louise Hyman, a waitress. The family settled in St. Clair Village, in the South Hills section of Pittsburgh, where Hyman was raised. A singer, songwriter, and actress, she built a career spanning the late 1970s through the early 1990s and became recognized for her expansive contralto voice.

After leaving Pittsburgh, Hyman completed training at a music school and in 1971 joined a national tour with the group New Direction. Following the group's disbanding, she performed with All the People and The Hondo Beat before leading her own ensemble, Phyllis Hyman and the P/H Factor, for two years. She made an early film appearance in Lenny in 1974. In 1975, music industry figures Sid Maurer and Fred Frank signed her to Roadshow Records/Desert Moon. That same year, she relocated to New York City, contributing background vocals to Jon Lucien's Premonition and performing in clubs on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Norman Connors encountered her performing after a Lucien concert at Carnegie Hall and recruited her as the female vocalist on his fourth album for Buddah Records, You Are My Starship, released in 1976. The title track received jazz radio airplay and the album went Gold. Connors and Hyman also charted on the R&B chart with a remake of The Stylistics' "Betcha by Golly, Wow."

Hyman released her debut solo album, Phyllis Hyman, on Buddah Records in 1977, having also sung with Pharoah Sanders and the Fatback Band during that period. When Arista Records acquired Buddah, she moved to the new label. Her first Arista album, Somewhere in My Lifetime, appeared in 1978, with its title track produced by Barry Manilow. The follow-up, You Know How to Love Me, reached the R&B Top 20 and performed well on club and dance charts. In the late 1970s, Hyman married her manager Larry Alexander, the brother of Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander; the marriage ended in divorce in 1982. Her first solo R&B Top Ten hit came in 1981 with "Can't We Fall in Love Again?," a duet with Michael Henderson.

That same year, Hyman made her Broadway debut in Sophisticated Ladies, a musical revue built around the music of Duke Ellington. Her performance earned her a Theatre World Award in 1981 and a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical. She remained with the production for nearly two years, which ran through 1983. During a subsequent pause in her recording career stemming from difficulties with Arista, Hyman contributed vocals to film soundtracks and television commercials and collaborated with artists including Chuck Mangione, The Whispers, The Four Tops, and jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, providing vocals for three tracks on Tyner's Looking Out in 1982. In 1983, she recorded "Never Say Never Again" as a proposed title song for the James Bond film of the same name, written by Stephen Forsyth and Jim Ryan, though the track was ultimately not used after composer Michel Legrand asserted contractual rights to the title song; a version by Lani Hall was used instead.

Free from Arista by 1985, Hyman signed with Philadelphia International Records, the label founded by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, and released Living All Alone in 1986. The album featured the torch songs "Old Friend," "You Just Don't Know," and the melancholy title track, which became one of her signature recordings. In 1987, she recorded the duet "Black and Blue" with Barry Manilow for his album Swing Street. She subsequently appeared in the films School Daze in 1988 and The Kill Reflex in 1989, and continued contributing guest vocals to albums by artists including Grover Washington Jr. and Lonnie Liston Smith while conducting international tours.

Hyman's 1991 Philadelphia International album Prime of My Life represented the commercial peak of her recording career. It produced her first number-one R&B hit and first Billboard Top 100 entry, "Don't Wanna Change the World," along with two additional top-ten R&B singles, "Living in Confusion" and "When You Get Right Down to It." The album and its debut single both received RIAA Gold certification in 1992. Shortly afterward, she appeared on a Norman Connors album singing the title track "Remember Who You Are," which became a minor R&B hit.

Hyman had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression during the 1980s and struggled with those conditions throughout her life. On June 30, 1995, she died by suicide at her apartment at 211 West 56th Street in New York City, hours before a scheduled performance at the Apollo Theater. She was found unconscious at 2:00 p.m. and was pronounced dead at 3:50 p.m. at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital. She was 45 years old. A memorial service was held at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan. In November 1995, five months after her death, the album I Refuse to Be Lonely was released. A posthumous compilation, One on One, followed in April 1998, and a second posthumous album of previously unreleased material, Forever with You, was released three years after her death.