I'm pleasantly surprised to see Mary Stallings mentioned twice already! She is also one of my favorites, but I thought that she was a bit 'under the radar'.
Hard to confine it to three, of course, but I'll work around that with my three favorite lesser known singers:
I despise Natalie Merchant but I am fairly certain she could kick all three of their asses at the same time with one arm tied behind her back. I saw her with 10,000 Maniacs when she yelled at the audience for twenty minutes for being litterbugs. I was fifteen people back from the stage and I was afraid for my safety.
I just adore singers of whatever sex, but especially female. Hmm, that doesn’t read quite right, but I’ll leave it.
Today I listened to Amy. And Tori. And Dido (need some kit that can reproduce some really low hz for her). Regina Spektor is very special. No sufficient words for Christine McVie.
And an outlier, a very special thing that I don’t often do, as I am not a fan of opera - Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, in the Decca recording of Marriage of Figgaro. Divine. Some may have heard majesty in the film Shawshank Redemption.
edit - and for crying out loud, two legends who must be named are Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. They sang in a small band known in Australia as ABBA.
Glad to see Sandy appearing twice prior to my post, bearing in mind that neither she nor Fairport really cracked the US of A in period. She was born in Wimbledon, where I was brought up and her brother David went to my school, five years prior to me.
I listen to female singers for the quality of the voice. From opera and singers of classical material I note only Cecilia Bartoli makes the cut and then only at no.4. This may be because many find trained voices forced, unnatural and unattractive, as I do. At least Bartoli is at the 'less trained, more natural' end of the spectrum and as a result has avoided the big parts, outside Mozart and a few other lighter works. Joan Baez' wonderful voice in her younger days could easily have taken on that same zone of opera without training and if she had, opera would have benefitted. Perhaps I would listen to it more often. I bought many used golden period opera LPs, mainly on Decca, in the late 80s, not expecting to listen much but unable to leave them on the shelf at £1 an LP, or sometimes less. I have about 5 shelf feet of these. They do sound good, still some of the best sound around. Choosing carefully, many had been hardly played. The Ring cycle with 19LPs cost £12, mint. I note it can still be had on eBay in such condition for around £90.
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