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Amy Winehouse · S1 E3
Nan Cynthia
Amy's grandmother dated Ronnie Scott, the man who opened London's most famous jazz club. She fills Amy's childhood with Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and Tony Bennett
A sitting room in North London, around 1990. Seven-year-old Amy Winehouse sits cross-legged on her grandmother's carpet, eyes closed, mouthing every word to a Dinah Washington record while Nan Cynthia watches from the doorway and knows exactly what she is looking at.
Amy Winehouse performing October Song. A tender jazz ballad written when Amy was barely out of her teens, carrying every lesson she absorbed on her grandmother's carpet.
October Song
From Frank (2003). A quietly devastating ballad about loss, built on jazz phrasing and vocal restraint. Listen for the way Amy holds back when another singer would push harder. That discipline, knowing when silence says more than volume, came directly from afternoons spent copying Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington records at her grandmother's house.
“My nan introduced me to proper jazz. Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, all the greats. She's the reason I sing the way I sing.”
— Amy Winehouse
TAP TO REVEAL: What vocal technique did Amy absorb directly from Dinah Washington's records?
Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club
47 Frith Street, Soho, London. The jazz club opened in 1959 where Nan Cynthia spent time in the Soho jazz scene, and where Amy herself would later perform.
October Song
From Frank (2003). A tender, jazz-inflected ballad about loss. The vocal restraint, the subtle phrasing, the way she holds back when another singer would oversing: this is the jazz discipline she learned on her grandmother's carpet. Pure proof of what Cynthia's record collection built.
Nan Cynthia's Record Collection
Nan Cynthia gives Amy a musical vocabulary that will last a lifetime. Next: the divorce that splits the Winehouse household in two and leaves a scar on every song Amy will ever write.
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