The World Takes Notice
I have appreciated the kind words from the critics through the years. I have included some here that you may be interested in reading.
I have also been honored with a number of awards as well, we have a list -- click here. And some interesting quotes from some good friends and smart critics, click here.
What the press have been saying about Rosalie.
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Rosalie Remembers - Boston Globe
Monday Sep 1, 2008
By Scott Alarik -- No musician knew Utah Phillips better than Idaho folk treasure Rosalie Sorrels, or did more to make him the legendary figure he became. She shares her long, loving history with the late songwriter-raconteur on the CD "Strangers in Another Country," a tender, deeply personal masterpiece of song and memory. close
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Rosalie Sorrels Idaho Icon - Boise Weekly
Wednesday Aug 20, 2008
Rosalie Sorrels is an Idaho icon. The singer/songwriter is a source of pride for the Gem State and may be even more so after the release of her latest—and 25th—album, Strangers in Another Country: The Songs of Bruce "Utah" Phillips. Read More
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BY AMY ATKINS
Phillips was a musician and an activist, and Sorrels, now 75, and Phillips had been friends for 55 years before his death this year. When Red House Records asked her to record an album of his songs, she gladly agreed. Sorrels traveled to New York to work with renowned producer Roma Baran; Minneapolis to record with the Sorry Muthas; and Boston to work with Peggy Seeger. It was a taxing schedule but one that she spoke of not with a sense of weariness but one of accomplishment. The album includes 14 songs and some spoken word tracks in which she recites some of Phillips' favorite poetry. Sorrels said she loved working on "Jesse's Corrido" and "Schofield Mine Disaster" and that she thinks listeners will find a real connection with "Green Rolling Hills of West Virgina," a song Phillips wrote after meeting a destitute, poverty-stricken woman who could have found an easier life elsewhere but told him the hills kept pulling her back. Sorrels shared one ghost story about recording this album. When Michael Feldman brought his NPR show, Whad'Ya Know? to Boise this year, he asked her to perform live, and she sang Phillips' "Ashes on the Sea." The next day, a friend called to tell her Phillips' had passed away and his time of death coincided with her performance. close |
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Celebrating Sorrels' 'Last Go Round' - Boston Herald
Monday Mar 25, 2002
Despite the stage full of gifted friends. the most indelible moment of Saturday night's "Rosalie Sorrels and Her Friends: A Celebration of 40 Years" was Sorrels all alone, singing an a cappella song of mortality, Pete Seeger's "Old Devil Time." Read More
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By Daniel Gewertz Despite the stage full of gifted friends. the most indelible moment of Saturday night's "Rosalie Sorrels and Her Friends: A Celebration of 40 Years" was Sorrels all alone, singing an a cappella song of mortality, Pete Seeger's "Old Devil Time." A keen knowledge of mortality and a graceful assent to less permanent departures permeated the long show. After 36 years as America's "Travelin' Lady" folk singer, Sorrels' is retiring from the road. And the sold-ou t show at Sanders Theatre, lovingly organized by MultiStage Productions, was a trip through the singer's colorful life, as playful as it was sentimental. The night began with Patrick Sky, the long retired 1960s folk singer, playing a dirge on Celtic uillean pipes in tribute to a departed friend, the great folk/blues singer Dave Van Ronk. "It's almost like being in a living room," said Sorrels about the dimly lit, wood-paneled stage filled with friends. "This night is a stew of memory for me." Ritchie was in fine, delicate voice on "Pretty Sarah." Seeger, a funny, prickly presence onstage, sang a deeply affecting song about mortality. "Love Will Linger On." She still has an amazingly high, little-girlish voice, which she used on the sentimental singalong "Friends Carry Me Over." Bromberg in high theatrical/comic blues mode, made the most of his two-song spot, first with a gritty, ornery, hilarious "Statesboro Blues," and then a long, flamboyant blues song of gleeful retribution. "I'll take you back when rattlesnakes have knees and money grows on trees," he bellowed and growled. Lavin was in comic-gimmickry overdrive. The new "Sunday Breakfast With Rosalie" actually contained a devilishly complex recipe for Sorrels' petit pain au chocolat. She distributed 1,000 printed recipes to the crowd. Her droll song "Wind Chimes" came replete with six windchime "players" onstage. Wainwright, in calmer mode, also excelled. The second half featured Sorrels and her fine band. Several Utah Philips songs were among the emotionally affecting highs. "A Winter Song" was a gorgeous a cappella song-poem. And a song based on lyrics by Don Marquis, about a moth's attraction to flame, was the night's merriest ode to mortality. Along the way, Sorrels chatted warmly about her life on the road, including some high old times in the Lion's Head Bar in Greenwich Village, "my office for several years," where the talk and song among friends sometimes lasted until 9 a.m. A song dedicated to her daughters. "Last Go Round," was a delicious closer for this folk legend. of alternative music: "My songs don't belong on the Top 40 radio/I'm gonna make that old back 40 be my home." close |
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The Story of Rosalie Sorrels - Boston Phoenix
Friday Mar 15, 2002
The story of Rosalie Sorrels, the Idaho songcatcher, folksinger, storyteller, and "travelin’ lady," has become its own folk tale — a 20th-century folk tale at that. In the mid ’60s, an Idaho-born teenager caught up in a bad marriage divorces her husband, scoops up their five children, hops in the car, and sets out without much hope of making a living. Read More
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BY CARLY CARIOLI
It’s been 40 years, and lots of water has flowed under the bridge: 22 albums, collaborations with the Beats and Utah Phillips, Newport ’66, Woodstock ’69, Isle of Wight ’70. And pain: her eldest son committed suicide a couple of decades ago, and Rosalie has survived a brain aneurysm and, more recently, a bout with breast cancer. None of these setbacks ever stopped her from performing. In the end, what’s forced her to accept "retirement" — note the qualifying quotation marks — is her eyesight. "I’m not going to stop singing," says the 68-year-old, "but I’m not driving anymore, I’ve had to cut that down quite a bit. I don’t see very well at night: you wouldn’t want me out there! I drove 90,000 miles one year — truck drivers don’t drive that much. I can’t take that kind of a pace. Oh, but I loved it, gypsying around and seeing the country, it was wonderful. I fly a lot more now." To celebrate Sorrels’s semi-retirement, her friends are throwing her a celebration next Saturday night at Sanders Theatre, with the reclusive guitarist David Bromberg, bitchin’ babe Christine Lavin, Jean Ritchie, Peggy Seeger, Loudon Wainwright III, and Patrick Sky. Van Ronk had agreed to come too, but he died on February 10. "It broke my heart," says Sorrels. "We’d known each other since 1967, and he’s always been such a good friend. All of my children adored him, he always had this Dutch-uncle way he would talk to them." The concert is dedicated to his memory. And what will Sorrels do with herself now? "I actually live in a beautiful place," she says of her Idaho cabin, on land that’s been in her family since before she was born. "I want to spend more time here." She’s also hoping to travel: Spain and Australia are on her list of things to do. "I want to see 50 kangaroos somewhere," she laughs. And she has some recording projects in mind, though she’s skeptical about finding a label to back them. "I have three or four albums I’d really like to do, none of them would sell. I did an album some time ago that was mostly spoken-word. It was mostly my mother’s writing: she was enormously literate, and she wrote about living alone in a cabin. She wrote very articulately about solitude. I love the writing, and I recorded it with some songs that she likes. I did it to please her more than anything else — and it did, so I regard it as a real success! But you can see where it wouldn’t be a real hot seller. "I’d also like to do something like that relative to my father, who I thought was a very interesting person. I’d like to do something about solitude. Which I think is a massively neglected subject, to everyone’s detriment." BY CARLY CARIOLI close |
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The Peace Quilt Project
Friday Aug 31, 2001
Presented to Rosalie Sorrels, Idaho folksinger/storyteller for using her powerful voice and music of the people in the search for peace and justice." - Boise Peace Quild Project. Rosalie received the Peace Quilt Award in August of 2001 Read More
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Presented to Rosalie Sorrels, Idaho folksinger/storyteller for using her powerful voice and music of the people in the search for peace and justice." - Boise Peace Quild Project. Rosalie received the Peace Quilt Award in August of 2001
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A Woman's World - Boston Globe
Friday Nov 10, 2000
Looking back on her rermarkable career of songwriter Malvina Reynolds, it is hard not to conclude that she would be much better known today if she had been a man. As political songwriters, only Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger cast larger shadows on the folk revival before the 1960's; it can be argued that her unique blend of personal and po1ilical had even more influence on many in the next generation of folk writers. Read More
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By Scott Alarik, Globe Correspondent Rejuvenating the songs of Malvina Reynolds Rosalie Sorrels Keep Reynold's Songs Alive Looking back on her rermarkable career of songwriter Malvina Reynolds, it is hard not to conclude that she would be much better known today if she had been a man. As political songwriters, only Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger cast larger shadows on the folk revival before the 1960's; it can be argued that her unique blend of personal and po1ilical had even more influence on many in the next generation of folk writers.
Rosalie Sorrels keeps Reynolds's songs alive "REYNOLDS c<mJim":dj'rcmPagtEJ5 "Malvina was one of the first who was a female and wrote political songs," said folk singer-songwriter Rosalie Sorrels, whose new Red House CD, "No Closing Chord," is a candid and musically haunting tribute to Reynolds, produced by Nina Gerber and featuring BonnieRaitt, Barbara Higbie, Terry Garthwaite, and Laurie Lewis. Sorrels was also curator of two Smilhsonian/Folkways CDs of Reynolds singing her own songs. The first volume, "Bar to the Ground," came out last summer. "There was really a sense at the beginning of the '60s revival that it was the province of the male society to write songs; Judy Col1in, and Joan Baez were very fine, but basically girl singers using male songs. Malvina helped teach us how to take our personal feelings into our songs; that you recognize what's funny or meaningful about you as a woman singing about these issues and pul that into your songs." Sorrels is now among the first ladies of American folksong, but she was a wild child of the '60s when she became a friend and protegee of Reynolds. She credits her turning her rebelliousness from a destructive force into an artistic one; and with literally savomg her life, since Reynolds was the first to warn her of the dangers of cancer and teach her about self examinalion. Sorrels is now recovering from breast cancer. "Malvina was determined to live a useful life, "she said, adding that the life long progressive left the Communist Party because all they wanted her to do was type and make coffee. Even being a radical was not considered woman's work in those days. Still, her politics got Reynolds blacklisted in the l950s. lt was her determination to speak her mind as a woman that led her to songwriting. She was over 40 when she wrote her first song, Reynolds became equally adept at simplistic rally songs, often written for specific issues, protests, or causes, and sweepingly universal anthems, such as her environmental classic "What Have They Done to the Rain?," which was recorded by Sorrels, Baez, Collins, and a host of other '60s; folk singers. But unlike many of her contemporaires, she also wrote with a keen empathy for differing points of view, illuminating the gray space between the blacks and whites of hotly debated issues. In "Rosie Jane." wrilten more than 30 years ago, she argues for a woman's right to choose in a musical dialogue between a woman who has an unwanted pregnancy and a patronizing doctor. It sueceeds because it refuses to take sides by portraying the woman as victim or heroine. The sheer complexity of the dilemma makes the case for women needing to make this decision for themselves, Sorrels always suspected that Reynolds wrote the song about her after once mistakenly assuming she was pregnant Reynolds always denied it, but after Reynolds death in 1978, her daughter acknowledged that she had but had not wanted to hurt Sorrels's feelings by saying so. The song is on both CDs, and Sorrels' ersion is a droll comic masterptece, brimming with affection. "She was able to identify what it was to be human whatever the situation she was writing about," said Sorrels, "one of my favorite I children's songs of hers goes, 'Everybody says sit down, S1t down / I can't sit down, I can't sit down / My feet are full of runaround.' Now if that isn't a perfect description of a kid, I don't know what is. In everything she wrole and did, she cut through all the bull, made you get specific about what you liked and didn't like and what you wanted to change." One of Reynolds's favorite terms was "A Little Muscle," which became the title ofa posthumous ode by Janet Smith, sung beautifully by Sorrels on "No Closing Chord." "The word muscle was importrant her because she was a woman and old and therefore often shunted aside," said sorrels. "She meant by it intellectual muscle and insistence, saying, 'You have to lsten to me, because I have something important to say.' People tried to ignore her; it was not possible. And also, she was talking about the kind of muscle that evolves from people doing things together; how you feel weak and helpless all by yourself, but when you all get together and and work and insist, that you can get something done -- you have muscle.
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Red House Records on NO CLOSING CHORD and THE LONG MEMORY
Wednesday Oct 18, 2000
Catch one morsel of ROSALIE SORRELS' voice and you know you're in the presence of a person of real substance. One of our finest living folkingers, she has been the subject of much tribute of late ... an honorory doctorate from the Univenity of Idaho, a new Sorrels archive at UC Santa Cruz and a featured chapter in on up coming book by STUDS TERKEL. But the rood to these honors has been long and hard, filled with twists and turns, joy, pain ... and a whole lot of living. Every rich experience is reRected with profound clarity in her voice, one of the great and expressive instruments of American music. Read More
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"Rosalie Sorrels sings each song as if it's her life story." -- ROLLING STONE ROSALIE SORRELS NO CLOSING CHORD THE SONGS OF MALVINA REYNOLDS - RHR 143 CD
On this important new release, Rosalie pays tribute to an old friend and American folk icon-1960s topical songwriter MALVINA REYNOLDS. Malvina's songs were among the most powerful anthems of that era's social causes, and Rosalie gives them readings that are simply mesmerizing. With richly adorned arrangements and a strong cast of players including BONNIE RAITT, LAURIE LEWIS, TERRY GARTHWAITE, BARBARA HIGBIE ond guitarist/producer NINA GERBER, NO ClOSING CHORD warmly commemorates the Centennial of Reynolds' birth! "Rosalie's songs are so close to the bone that I get nervous listening to them." - HUNTER S. THOMPSON THE LONG MEMORY· RHR 83 CD with U. UTAH PHILLIPS 1997 INDIE AWARD WINNER FOR TRADITIONAL FOLK! This is on epic collection of authentic outbursts and radical songs from the picket lines ... as well as stories of and about the labor struggle in America's mines, mills and factories. Rosalie Rescite teams up with her old amigo and hobo/Wobblie legend, U. UTAH PHILLPS on this one. Her poignant and soulful deliveries provide spiritual counterpoint to Utah's more visceral renditions. The booklet also features great historical photos and liner notes by PETE SEEGER, Rosalie & Utah! "With a political fighter's passion and the grace of a poet ... Sorrels makes it hip to care." -- CHICAGO READER close |
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"Queen of Soul -- In Idaho, she's Rosalie Sorrels - Boise Weekly
Saturday Apr 1, 2000
For most of the two years I lived in Boise, my wife and kids were back in northern California, and once a month or so I'd gas up and make the run down to Chico for a long weekend. There were two ways to go through southern Oregon or northern Nevada, each exactly 600 miles long. I usually went down through Oregon and came back through nevada. Read More
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By Rober Speer For most of the two years I lived in Boise, my wife and kids were back in northern California, and once a month or so I'd gas up and make the run down to Chico for a long weekend. There were two ways to go through southern Oregon or northern Nevada, each exactly 600 miles long. I usually went down through Oregon and came back through nevada. The Oregon route is more scenic, but the Nevada route is faster and, just as important, it gave me an opportunity. somewhere on highway 95 north of Winnemucca after the sun had gone down, to put on a tape and listen to Rosalie Sorrels singing "Nevada Moon." There was nothing in the world that could make me happier to be driving through the darkness of northern Nevada on my way home to Idaho than listening to that song She wrote it, she says, on just such a night. She'd been in San Francisco, the last stop on a weeks-long tour. When she finished her performance that night, she felt an overwhelming desire to be back in Idaho, in her cabin on Grimes Creek near Idaho City. She drove all night, keeping awake by composing the song in her head. It's from her Borderline Heart album, which is one of my favorites, despite its not having the usual wonderful storytelling patter between songs that characterizes most of Rosalie's many recordings, It's still pure Rosalie, full of whimsy, compassion for the underdog, righteous indignation at injustice and, at times, deep, deep emotion, I can't listen to "The Hitchhiker," a lament Rosalie wrote about her older son, who killed himself without feeling an ineffable sadness in the song, one that's made all the more touching by being expressed so beautifully The poet Gino Sky, Rosalie's good friend and sometime performance partner, says that Idaho has sent only Like so many Idahoans, she's tough and self-reliant and laughs off trouble -- she couldn't otherwise have raised five kids alone and, while doing so, carved out a career as a traveling performer. And she loves the land, finding solace and inspiration in it. Finally, like the best Idahoans, she has a big, accepting heart that celebrates the variety of peoples in the state, This honky-tonking, whisky-drinking, lusty woman is, for example, an expert on Mormon folk music, regularly sings Mormon songs during performance, and in fact has recorded an album of them. Most of all, she's a consummate raconteur, and there are few pleasures in life greater than sitting among friends, listening to Rosalie Sorrels tell stories -- about growing up in Boise, about roaming the West, and about the colorful people she's met and loved. All of her tunes come attached to a tale of some kind that she unspools like a master weaver, captivating and delighting her audience, Anyone who loves Idaho and hasn't heard Rosalie Sorrels perform doesn't fully know the state, I believe. She's 67 now and still fighting life's battles, this lime against breast cancer, which fortunately is in remission. Now, as she looks back at her long, hard but wonderful life, with the eyes of a wise woman. That's what enables her to sing such exquisite songs as "Last Go Around"; And when my wandering soul shall rest close |
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The Heart-Felt Tone - Boise Magazine - Rosalie Sorrels
Monday Oct 18, 1999
I wanted to be an opera singer. At 10, I was exchanging babysitting for voice lessons. At 14. I went to Los Angeles to see La Boheme. Bidou Sayou sang "Mimi." Read More
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I wanted to be an opera singer. At 10, I was exchanging babysitting for voice lessons. At 14. I went to Los Angeles to see La Boheme. Bidou Sayou sang "Mimi."
Jazz is where I first heard it and understood it. I was lucky. Boise was a jazz town. There were good DJs, good local players and all those musicians out on the road. We were somehow in the loop. The first really great band I heard in person was at my graduation in 1951. Louis Armstrong and the All-stars: Jack Teagarden, Barney Bigard, Big Sid Catlett, Earl "Fatha" Hines and Arvell Shaw played in the Boise High gymnasium. I stayed out all night hanging on the fringes of a jam. I neglected to tell my mother where I was, and shes probably still telling the angels how mad she was. I was a loner in high school and never learned to relate to people-too shy. But sometime during my freshman year, I found my way into Holsinger's music store on Eighth Street. It was well stocked and had two exceptional extras: one, the listening booths in the back; the other, Cliff Green. Cliff eventually had his own place, Boise Music, but at Holsinger's he was more than a clerk. He showed me whole new worlds. "You like that?" he asked, as I was listening to Django Reinhardt and the Hot Club of France. "I don't know. I don't think a violin is supposed to sound like that." "Take it home and listen some more, that's Stephan Grapelli." Two days later when I brought it back and bought it He said, "You loved it, didn't you"? "Yeah!" "Then try this!"
My husband Jim loved jazz, too. He was friendly with some of the guys from Ellington's and Basie's bands and, since they came through here often, a few started coming to our house after the gigs, particularly Jimmy Hamilton and Paul Gonzalves. We'd have a few drinks, listen to records; they'd tell us road stories and I'd make breakfast. Jimmy Hamilton told me my biscuits made sounds. There were first-rate local musicians, too, and some incredible sessions, I remember one when Ellington was at the Miramar Ballroom and Basie was in Caldwell. There was an all-nighter at Ralph Palmeri's Basque lounge and our babysitter couldn't stay late, so we took baby David downtown and I sat in the car with him while Jim caught a set, then he came up and took over while I heard one. That was when Frank Butler, one of the best drummers ever, and piano player extraordinaire Oscar Dinnard, were hung up here having been abandoned by their manager in Montana. Their bass player, Skip Warren, brought them here because his father was a minister at the only black Baptist church in town and could put them up. Skippy got a job carrying hod and laying bricks and they gigged some, but they couldn't get enough money together to get out of town for months. Baby David cut his teeth on Frank Butler's drumstick. I know a lot of people think of Idaho in terms of mountains, fly-fishing, potatoes, gold, wild rivers and timber, but I think of it as the source of the path I've taken to find my own voice. Opera from early Music Week extravaganzas, the complex excitement and beauty of jazz, the simple, honest music of the folks I grew up with, the "heart-felt tone" I aspire to--like a drop of perfume made from all those sounds, and they're all still here. How many western towns are hip enough to have a Gene Harris Jazz Festival? How lucky can you stay? close |
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Sorrels Remains True To Her Green Linnet 'Heart' - Billboard Magazine
Saturday Nov 11, 1995
When Idaho native Rosalie Sorrels entered the scene in the early to mid '60s such standard folk recordings as "Folksongs Of Utah And Idaho on Folkways and "If I Could Be The Rain" on Folk/Legacy, she was so fresh and compellingly real that she grew to beome the quintessential female folk performer. Read More
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BY ROGER DEITZ
In August, Sorrels, now 62, released her 20th recording, "Borderline Heart," on Green Linnet. It is as honest and entertaining as her first albums, flavored with Western swing and smoky barroom sass. Sorrels, who has been a role model for a generation of female singer/songwriters, is pleased with the "high-powered ladies" on the album, Including Laurie Lewis, Nina Gerrber, Barbara Higbie. Sorrels' manager and folk revival notable Mltch Greenhill produced and played bass on "Borderlin Heart." "I loved having Mitch produce it," she says. "He really respected my integrity, and he made it happen." Sorrels adds, "Most of the pressures of makmg an album come from a lack of money and a lack of time ... [On this album] everyone liked each other, everyone like the material. We didn't have to rush, we had enough time to do it, to sit together, to give the attention to each song. That doesn't mean it took a year -- we did three tunes a day." Green Linnet is supporting the record with an independent promoter who will work it to roots-oriented commercial radio, and the label is also promoting the record at public and college radio, according to director of publicity Judith Joiner. "We Came up with this promotional concept that she is the 'Highway Woman,'" says Joiner. "It's almost like a country rock album. She's in top form and has awesome players on it, and we've decided to give it the push she's probably deserved all her life. " Plans are in the works for a retail tour that will encompass such books-and-music stores as Borders and Barnes & Noble, as well as the independent bookstores and coffeehouses that have always been crucial to folk, according to Joiner. The album's literary bemt--including one song taken from the book "Demon Box" by Ken Kesey--makes it a perfect match for bookstore tie-ins and advertising in literary magazines, notes Joiner. In addition, the label is focusing on the album's blending of country and rock: Sorrels will be featured on the CD sampler in the December issue of New Country magazine. As a child,Sorrels listened to the singing of her father and pored over a scrapbook of songs compiled by her grandmother. But her aspirations were put on hold when, in 1945, at the age of 16, she underwent a botched, illegal, motel-room abortion. A year later, as a high school honors student, she gave up a baby girl for adoption, whom she has not seen since. Married at 19, Sorrels spent the next 14 years as a housewife in Salt Lake City collecting songs and stories while singing as a hobby with her husband, Jim. In the '50s and early '60s, their home hosted beat literati, offbeat musicians, artists, writers, and poets. But her marriage was stormy, and Sorrels divorced 33. With her five children loaded into a truck (an odyssey chronicled by Nanci Griffith in her song "Ford Econoline"), the "Travelling Lady" took to the road. She landed at the Newport (R.I.) Folk Festival and showed folkdom that a hard-edged woman could break the Joan Baez/Judy Collins mold. "I never really thought about becoming a performer," says Sorrels. "My marriage brokeup, and I had to do something ... I tried to get a job, and I just couldn't find one. Then, somebody offered me a concert that made me more money than anyone would pay me for a month. I thought I'd try it. It's all I've done ever since." Ever since Sorrels took her tumbled life and swaddled it into a small truck. She has served as a role model for many roots-based musicians and young singer/songwriters seeking to emulalte her brand of empowering songs. "The American public has suffered enough from people trying to homogenize women and ethnicity into some thing blander," says Sorrels. "Ia am thrilled and excited to see a group like Los Lobos reach the number of people they do. They are a petfect example of rea1 American folk music. They take their music from where they came, and they take it back to the people that they extracted it from. They sing their roots, sing their current situation, and they sing it to their people and to everybody. To see that accepted in the marketplace is a real thrill for me." But Sorrels deigns to discuss any semblance of a folk scene, saying that things are pretty much the same now as when she started: "I played for people who wanted to hear me then, as I do now." she says. On a personal level, Sorrels, whose music publisher publisher is Grimes Creek Music/ASCAP, says she tells more storiea with her songs now. "When I began to think of mu self as a storyteller as opposed to a folksinger, I began to feel more secure and more like I belonged," she says. Sorrels offers a world-weary, hauntly sweet-voiced tour of life's brambles. Her vocalization is half a mother's comforting lullaby, half a brisk October wind wafting down Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains foreboding winter. Sorrels tells hushed, unspoken secrets: washing an unfamiliar shade of lipstick out of her husband's shirt collar; confronting a midwife; having doctors patch your insides just so theu can sue you; and the most tragic-- a child's suicide. Sorrels's next project is the writing of a play about her late friend, activist songwriter Malvina Reynolds. Reynolds' songs, including "Little Boxes," "Turn Around," and "What Have They Done To The Rain," helped define the sound of the '60s protest movement. Sorrels, on tour through November mainly on the West Coasl, is booked by her daughter Jacki Murray. close |
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Way Out In Idaho - The Association for Cultural Equity
Tuesday Aug 17, 1993 This is a very belated thank you letter for your g |
Rosalie Sorrels is an Idaho icon. The singer/songwriter is a source of pride for the Gem State and may be even more so after the release of her latest—and 25th—album, Strangers in Another Country: The Songs of Bruce "Utah" Phillips.