McCorkle was born in Berkeley, California. She studied modern languages at the University of California, Berkeley. McCorkle began singing professionally after hearing recordings of Billie Holiday in Paris in the late 1960s. She nearly became an interpreter at the European Commission in Brussels, but moved instead to London in 1972 to pursue a career in singing. While in the UK, she made two albums which, although well received, enjoyed only limited circulation.
In the late 1970s, McCorkle returned to the United States and settled in New York City, where a five-month engagement at the Cookery in Greenwich Village brought her to wider public attention and elicited rave reviews from critics.
During the 1980s, McCorkle continued to record; her maturing style and the darkening timbre of her voice greatly enhanced her performances. In the early 1990s, two of the albums McCorkle made for Concord Records, No More Blues and Sábia, were enormously successful and made her name known to the wider world. She was recorded by the Smithsonian Institution which at the time made her the youngest singer ever to have been included in its popular music series. McCorkle played Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher and Alice Tully Halls five times and Carnegie Hall three times, and was featured soloist with Skitch Henderson and the 80-piece New York Pops in a concert of Brazilian music.
Thanks to her linguistic skills, McCorkle translated lyrics of Brazilian, French, and Italian songs, notably those for her Brazilian album Sabia. McCorkle also had several short stories published and, in 1991, began work on her first novel. She published fiction in Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and non-fiction in the New York Times Magazine and in American Heritage, including lengthy articles on Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, Irving Berlin and Mae West.
McCorkle suffered for many years from depression and cancer, and took her own life at age 55 by leaping off the balcony of her highrise Manhattan apartment. She was alone in her home at the time. The police immediately entered her home after identifying her body and found no foul play. Suicide was ruled the cause of death.
I Loves You Porgy
Susannah McCorkle Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Don't let him take me
Don't let him handle me
And drive me mad
If you can keep me
I want to stay with you forever
And I'll be glad
I love you, Porgy
Don't let him take me
Don't let him handle me
With his hot hands
If you can keep me
I want to stay with you forever
I like my man
Someday I know he's coming
Back to call me
He's gonna handle me
And hold me so
It's going to be like dying, Porgy
When he calls me
But when he comes, I know
I'll have to go
The lyrics of Susannah McCorkle's song, "I Loves You, Porgy," tell the story of a woman who is torn between two men. She loves Porgy and wants to stay with him forever, but she knows that another man is going to come and take her away from Porgy. She begs Porgy not to let this happen, not to let the other man handle her with his hot hands and drive her mad. She loves Porgy deeply and sees a future with him, but she also knows that she is not entirely in control of her own fate. She is caught between her love for Porgy and the inevitability of her life being disrupted by the other man.
Line by Line Meaning
I love you, Porgy
I have strong feelings for you, Porgy.
Don't let him take me
Don't allow another person to take me away from you.
Don't let him handle me
Prevent this person from mistreating or abusing me.
And drive me mad
This person's treatment of me is unbearable and will drive me insane.
If you can keep me
If you can protect me and keep me safe, then I want to stay with you.
I want to stay with you forever
I am deeply committed to you and want to be with you for the long haul.
And I'll be glad
It would bring me joy to be with you forever.
With his hot hands
This person is touching me in an uncomfortable or inappropriate way.
I like my man
I prefer to be with you, Porgy, instead of this other person.
Someday I know he's coming
I am aware that this other person will try to come take me away from you.
Back to call me
This person will try to win me back and draw me away from you.
He's gonna handle me
This person plans to manipulate and control me in some way.
And hold me so
This person will try to physically restrain me in some way.
It's going to be like dying, Porgy
Being taken away from you will feel like a painful death to me.
When he calls me
When this other person reaches out to me again.
But when he comes, I know
Even though I do not want to leave you, I know that he will come for me.
I'll have to go
Ultimately, I will have to go with this other person, despite my desire to stay with you, Porgy.
Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: DU BOSE HEYWARD, GEORGE GERSHWIN, IRA GERSHWIN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind