Very sad news to report regarding Carly Simon‘s family. The singer/songwriter’s two older sisters, Lucy and Joanna, both died this week, a source close to Carly confirmed to Deadline.
Lucy died Thursday of breast cancer at the age of 82, while Joanna passed away Wednesday of thyroid cancer at age 84.
Lucy and Carly formed the folk duo The Simon Sisters during the early 1960s and recorded three albums during that decade. Perhaps their best known song was an adaptation of the children’s poem “Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod,” which reached #73 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Lucy released a couple of solo albums during the 1970s; in the early ’80s, she and her husband, David Levine, produced two Grammy-winning children’s albums — 1980’s In Harmony: A Sesame Street Record and 1981’s In Harmony 2.
Lucy’s biggest musical success was serving as composer for the 1991 Broadway musical The Secret Garden, which scored a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score.
She also wrote and produced music for the 1993 HBO film The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom.
In addition, Lucy composed music for a stage adaptation of Doctor Zhivago, which had a short Broadway run in 2015.
Joanna Simon had a long career as an opera singer, performing and recording with many orchestras over the years, including the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
From 1986 to 1992, she served as the arts correspondent for the PBS program The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour and won an Emmy Award for her reporting in 1991.
After the 2004 death of her husband, writer Gerald Walker, she was legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite‘s companion from 2005 until his death in 2009.
Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
