Kate McGarrigle, the Canadian singer songwriter who made gorgeous folk-pop records with her sister Anna, and founded a quirky performing dynasty with the wayward American singer Loudon Wainwright III, has died after a long battle with cancer.
Only a month ago she played a three hour “Wainwright Family Christmas” show at the Royal Albert Hall with her children Rufus and Martha, both stars in their own right.
However Anna wrote on the McGarrigle Sisters website yesterday: “Sadly our sweet Kate had to leave us last night. She departed in a haze of song and love surrounded by family and good friends. She is irreplaceable and we are broken-hearted. Til we meet again dear sister.”
The singer, who was 63, died at her Montreal home on Monday night surrounded by Anna and her other sister Jane and her children. She had been fighting cancer since the summer of 2006.
“Whispering” Bob Harris, the veteran music broadcaster, first encountered the McGarrigles on the television show The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1976. He said that “you could sum Kate up in one word: warmth”.
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As musicians, the McGarrigle Sisters’ sound — “the way they intertwined their voices around each other” — was unique, he added. “They had that sibling connection, like the Everly Brothers: two voices that instinctively mesh together in a quite amazing way to take you to a different place.”
Their debut album Kate and Anna McGarrigle beat releases such as Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run to be voted Melody Maker’s album of the year for 1975.
Both sisters put family life ahead of their careers but continued to record and perform on and off.