Our own Andy Rogovin wrote another beautiful song, this one about parenting children with special needs.

The entire group loves this song and as part of our charity efforts to raise money for the Asperger’s Association of New England, and the Autism Alliance of MetroWest, we've found donors who will contribute a dollar to these charities for each "Like" we get on YouTube. That's a pretty easy way to give to charity. Thanks to Hinckley Allen and NESCA (Neuropsychology & Education Services for Children and Adolescents) for offering to give up to $4,000 to match those "Likes."

The video is embedded below, but to get more information on the charity efforts and to "Like" it, you need to go to the YouTube page here. Thanks!

I'm embarrassed to admit that a month ago, I had no idea who Phoebe Snow was.

After listening to Paul Simon's "Gone At Last," I was curious to learn more about his duet partner on that song (from the album Still Crazy After All These Years). She also sang back up on "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" from the same album.

The second episode of Saturday Night Live (the second ever, in their first season), featured Paul Simon singing solo, reuniting with Art Garfunkel for a few songs and presenting Phoebe Snow for a song.

The video and audio aren't great here (someone filmed their television) but here's Phoebe Snow, 7 months pregnant, introduced by Paul Simon on  Saturday Night Live, October 18, 1975.

The always amusing AV Club section of The Onion actually reviewed this episode. Classic sentence:

"The episode opens with Simon, in his porn-mustache and the haircut of a man who doesn’t yet understand that letting his hair grow wild in those areas where it will still grow at all doesn’t make him look any less balding, alone onstage, singing the title song from his then-brand new album, Still Crazy After All These Years."

So who was Phoebe Snow? She was born Phoebe Ann Laub and took her stage name from a fictional character from an advertising campaign for a railway line.

Phoebe Snow is best-known for her song "Poetry Man" which got to #5 on Billboard's Top 100 and #1 on their adult contemporary chart:

From an interview with listen.com (via Songfacts):

"That was the second song I ever wrote in my whole life.... 'Poetry Man,' came about because I was really getting the hang of guitar picking and I had these open chords, not open tuning, open chords. And I was having a relationship with somebody. From the words you can probably deduce that the guy was married. It was a bad thing to do. But I got a lovely romantic sonnet out of it. As it turns out, he was not a particularly great guy either. I turned it into this ode to romance. It's funny looking back on it - I sat there and hunched over the guitar and said 'I'm gonna finish this.' I was in the throes of young romance."

For the record, although Jackson Browne was the rumored subject of this song -- she was 22 and opened for Browne to support her debut album -- Snow categorically denied the speculation.

So it's the mid-1970s and Paul Simon needs a duet partner for a song he wrote, "Gone At Last," so he and his producer, Phil Ramone, call to request -- and get -- the premier female singer in New York City: Bette Midler.

It didn't work out. Midler and Simon officially declared that they did not agree on the arrangement of the song, but a clash of personalities may have been involved. (As much as I admire Simon as a songwriter, I didn't have to delve deep into Paul Simon research to find people who hate him for various reasons; see: "Little" Steven Van Zandt, Steve Berlin of Los Lobos.)

In any case, Midler was out and Ramone and Simon then chose Snow to sing on the track.

Here's Paul Simon with Phoebe Snow performing "Gone At Last" on Late Night with David Letterman ("You're gonna hurt someone with that voice," Dave tells Snow at the end of the song).

The arrangement is very different --a lot of percussion and no piano, as well as overly busy backing vocals towards the end -- but this vocal certainly lacks the passion of Snow's recorded track.

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As the song says, Phoebe Snow had some bad luck. In 1975 she gave birth to a daughter, Valerie. Valerie suffered from severe brain damage, a result of hydrocephalus and, according to Snow, medical malpractice. Doctors did not expect her to live long and told her mother not to take her home from the hospital; they told her to put Valerie in an institution for a life that would be measured in months. "Never," Snow declared.

Phoebe chose to care for Valerie at home and, after divorcing Valerie's father, by herself. This meant stepping away from her musical career. Phoebe did such a good job caring for her daughter that Valerie confounded doctors by living for 31 years.

Phoebe's eulogy for her daughter is the only content on her website, phoebesnow.com.

Having chosen not to tour, Snow continued to support herself and Valerie by singing. She sang on numerous commercial jingles in the 1990s; I remember almost all of these commercials but had never realized it was the same voice on every one of them.

She sang, for instance, "Cotton, the fabric of our lives" although I couldn't find a copy on YouTube. (The song was so popular that Big Cotton remakes the commercial with new young singers and they have clogged up the search engines, but I did find a twenty year old version featuring Aaron Neville.)

Here are some more Phoebe snow jingle classics.

Phoebe Snow from a Stouffers Commercial (1995) "Nothing comes closer to home":

General Foods International Coffee, "Celebrate the moments of your life":

And now she's gone.

Here's Snow performing Etta James' signature song "At Last" with Donald Fagen's New York Rock and Roll Revue:

I can't believe I've only gotten to know Phoebe Snow. I certainly won't forget her, the example she set with her life, or her music.

Do you have a favorite Snow performance, or know of a jingle she sang on? Let us know in the comments.

A guest post by Daphne Romanoff about what singing in a choir has meant for her autistic son Ben

Most parents think back on their kids’ childhoods and it feels like a blur -- it goes by so quickly. It’s like that with my daughters, but not so much with my 23 year old son Ben. Ben is autistic - not high functioning, rather somewhere in the middle of the autism spectrum. In his case, this means that he lacks some basic social and communication skills necessary for him to function independently. It’s been a very slow, constant, incremental struggle to teach him how to live in our world, not his own.

Ben is at the tip of the large autistic population which has been more included in society than ever before, first in public education, now increasingly in the workplace. “Special” and “inclusion” have been pendulum points all of Ben’s life. Although some autistic children can be successfully included in regular classes, Ben has needed intensive, specialized training in the nuts and bolts issues of eye contact, attention, behavior management, language, academics, vocational training, and more.

Ben has been trained and now works independently in regular, busy kitchens -- not segregated work enclaves. Working alongside his co-workers, he can fill containers with mayonnaise, chop carrots, follow a simple recipe, and take out the trash. Ben loves music and has always been very attuned to auditory sensations. In fact, music can be distracting to him in some of the food prep jobs he’s worked at -- he’ll start singing and forget to cut the croutons.

Now that he has become an adult and aged out of publically-funded education at age 22, I’ve felt like I can step back and reflect upon Ben’s experience as a whole.  Although he has accomplished a lot, poignant questions still loom: How will he progress as an adult? How will he find pleasure in life? Where will he fit in? Where will he find harmony?

He did not have to go far, as it turns out. Ben’s ultimate inclusion activity is singing with our local community choir.

The Newton Family Singers is an intergenerational group of singers whose repertoire spans traditional American folk through more recent pop. The singers range from age 5 to more than 70. They are a neighborhood group, with no auditions to join, yet they took a gamble by admitting Ben into their choir. We had visited a number of choirs in search of a place where Ben was most likely to succeed and to push him to that next step beyond his comfort zone - and mine.

While the Newton Family Singers have made no special accommodations for Ben, he has been welcomed as a member of the choir. Having a deep voice, Ben sings in the bass section and his fellow bass singers help him when he needs it. They support him and he’s learned to respond to their prompts to pay attention and to find his place in the sheet music. I don’t think Ben can form friendships as such but I know he looks forward to seeing the other basses. Furthermore, they’ve come to accept Ben as one of their own.

Things aren’t perfect. I hear Ben’s voice when he comes in too early and I notice when he somewhat subtly flicks his fingers - an old autistic behavior of his. As part of his disability, Ben does not understand that different people have different perspectives. As a result, he used to sing along with soloists, or the sopranos -- whatever part had the melody. He didn’t recognize that people with different vocal ranges sang different parts.  Ben has been taught the fundamental skill of imitation, and he knows that applause is expected after performances. That’s why, if you attend one of our concerts, you will see one young man in the choir clapping along with the audience at the end of every song. Maybe one day he won’t clap with the audience, one day he will understand the different perspectives of being a performer versus an audience member.

This past season, however, Ben has learned that he is a bass and sings from that perspective. He listens to the other parts of the choir and understands the harmony that makes beautiful music. Maybe by singing in harmony, Ben is learning perspective taking through song.

I no longer come to rehearsals as Ben’s aide; caught up in the music and friendly faces, I’m now a Soprano singing with the Newton Family Singers. I rehearse at the opposite side of the choir, with an eye on Ben from afar. We have two entirely different parts to sing and Ben learns his lyrics much faster than I do.

Time continues to speed on, and Ben’s progress still moves in slow motion. But slow doesn’t mean standing still.

He’s on stage, and he’s singing his part. In harmony. With his community. And with me.

The Newton Family Singers’ next concert, April 13, 2014, will be a benefit to raise money for the Asperger’s Association of New England and the Autism Alliance of Metrowest