Melody’s talking voice is rich and warm. As we commiserate on the day I interviewed her, we begin by talking about what’s on the docket for her upcoming weekend of playing harp at weddings in Tennessee. I am soothed by her calm and inviting persona. Funny, because she was born in Brooklyn and moved to Long Island when she was twelve. While we’re conversing I think about all the people I know from that area and most of them are not as calm and cool as Cooper.
“The short version of my story is that I moved out when I was seventeen,” and then she pauses and asks “How do I tell a short version of my life?” We laugh and I assure her that she can give me the long one.
“My family was lovely, but Long Island and I were not a good fit. I moved out when I was seventeen and in with my boyfriend at the time.” That boyfriend had marriage and kids in his future plans while Melody’s path was one of adventure, travel and music. So it was goodbye and so long as she headed
to Toronto to visit a friend named Marguerite.
Now, Marguerite is important to this story because she’s my connection to Melody Cooper. Marguerite and her husband Joe and I became good friends after they moved here from New York many years ago. I’ve been hearing about Melody Cooper for at least the past 10 years!
Car trouble was the reason a fateful trip with friends that was originally scheduled to end up in NOLA for Mardi Gras, ended up instead, in Key West Florida in 1972. As Melody stepped out of the broken-down van, she meets a woman named “Sunshine” whose spirit so captivates and aligns with Melody’s spirit that Sunshine offers up her newly vacated apartment and invites her to move into it! When the other friends move on, Melody stays on.
That pivotal time marked the beginning of what would end up being a 15 year run where Cooper migrated back and forth between her apartment in Florida and her apartment in New York before settling in Key West. And all the while, she immersed herself in a variety of music configurations. Where she found time to run a restaurant, I have no idea, but she did that too!
Formed in 1998 and still going,
Paradise Big Band out of Key West was the name of the orchestra Miss Melody sang and played piano for during that time. She was part of a chamber music ensemble called Bach to Bossa Nova, and an all-girl fronted Motown revue called The Fabulous Spectrelles that toured London and had a #1 record!
Trained in Classical piano from age
seven, the inspiration for learning about, singing and playing jazz music started with a radio station in NYC that played entire discographies of selected Jazz artists. “I fell in love with Jazz when I was 13. I had a transistor radio and in the middle of the night I listened to a radio program that played entire libraries of artists like John
Coltrane and Sarah Vaughn.”
“I was just so shy and quiet that it wasn’t until my mid-twenties, that I started singing. I was really interested in singing jazz, but for a long time I was playing Jazz piano and singing solo soprano opera!”
“Extreme shyness” is an affliction she overcomes out of pure desire and passion for playing and singing to live audiences. “I forced myself to take chances. Moving out on my own, traveling alone, solo gigs and pushing myself, eventually helped me get over my extreme shyness. I started thinking about what it would take to trust myself. I convinced myself that once I put my hands on an instrument or opened my mouth to sing, I wasn’t going to suck. That’s when the true magic and connection to the music happened.”
Most of her musical training comes from the tutelage of notable private instructors. “Instead of going through a university, studying from someone who has the book, I took private classes from the person who wrote the book.” She studied with Barry Harris, Alberto Socarras and Franko Richmond. For voice she learned directly from Emily Boyd-Lowe and Patricia Caceido.
She and her common law husband, Dan Simpson, met thirty-five years ago. “He’s a brilliant engineer, bassist, guitarist, composer and instrument builder.”
In the 70’s and 80’s Jazz, Latin, Motown and Funk dance bands were coming out of Key West. “Dan and I were in a band called Bill Blue and the Nervous Guys. But I started to feel overwhelmed about spending so much of my time in bars. So I began looking for other ways to make a living as a musician. I started teaching voice and I became the music director at a Unity Church in Key West.”
Simpson and Cooper have been coming through Asheville for many years on their way to and from 150 acres that Simpson owns in Palestine, West Virginia. After some bad hurricanes they started rethinking living in Key West. “So we decided to build a cabin on the property. We actually hand built it with 2 other friends.” For a while, they split their time between the cabin in WV and their place in Key West while deciding when to move out of Florida entirely. “We had the high end trailer with a studio and an upper deck in Stock Island, FL and then this cabin in the middle of the woods in WV. We called it the Holiday Hillbilly package!”
The couple remains partners in a recording studio in Key West called Private Ear Recording and Sound. In its heyday, they ran the entire operation. It was the go-to studio in the area for singer songwriters and bands putting out CD’s, theaters that needed sound effects for books on tape and more.
As the internet age gave way to musicians building home studios and with the increasing cost of living and the increasing intensity of hurricanes and storms in the Keys, they felt like they were spinning wheels. Before she and Dan left Key West to settle here, she was working 4 or 5 jobs and swore she’d never put herself through that stress and fast pace again.
“We chose Asheville because I knew it was a destination place.” When it became obvious to her, in her mid-fifties, that hiring a piano player for weddings wasn’t as popular as hiring a harpist, she bought one and taught herself how to play it! Within 6 months she was playing weddings regularly and has been ever since.
Melody has become one of the premier harpist’s in WNC and has performed at all the significant wedding venues in the area. She’s written a catalog of original songs for popular and inspirational music. And if that wasn’t enough she is also an accomplished public speaker and yoga instructor!
From her website: “All of this background has given me a varied repertoire, and a love for all types of music, roots to modern.”
Peggy Ratusz is a vocalist, songwriter and vocal coach
Peggy’s May performance dates:
Friday, May 14th, Catawba South Slope, 7pm-10pm
Sunday, May 16th, Southern
Appalachian Brewery, 3pm-5pm