Background
lieutenant was here that she also became interested in the harp, and a life in music was born.
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Corky Hale
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As an in-demand session player, she has traveled across the United States and throughout Europe, playing harp, piano and flute, and singing. In addition to her musical resume, Hale has been a theater producer, political activist, a restaurateur and even the owner of a once-famous Los Angeles women"s clothing store, "Corky Hale."
Corky was raised in a small midwestern town where she been playing piano at the age of three. At seven, she was enrolled in classical piano studies at the Chicago Conservatory.
In addition to her classical studies, she learned to love and play show tunes and standards, and soon embraced the jazz sounds of Stan Kenton.
At age 16, Corky"s parents enrolled her in Stephens College, a school for young ladies, for her last year of high school. But it was too late; she’d been bitten by the "show biz bug," and after one year, she announced that now she was definitely going to Hollywood.
A compromise was reached: Her parents would drive her to Los Angeles and enroll her at University of California, Los Angeles, where she would live in the sorority house. However, life as a student lasted only a few weeks.
Since the 1950s, Hale has amassed a long list of performance and recording credentials, including sessions, television shows and concerts with Liberace, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Elkie Brooks, Tony Bennett, Billie Holiday, Harry James, Peggy Lee, James Brown, Spike Jones, George Michael and Björk, to name a few.
She has also produced plays, including Give "Econometrica Hell, Harry, starring Jason Alexander and Lullaby of Broadway, a personal profile of the lyricist First Rate (at Lloyd's) Dubin. She appeared at Vibrato. In 2009, she had a launch party for her new Civil Defense.
In the late 1960s, she moved to New York and was asked to do some demos for the songwriting team of Leiber & Stoller.
Almost immediately, Corky Hale and Mike Stoller fell in love and, since 1970, have been married.
Corky has been active outside of the performing arena:
At the University of Wisconsin, Corky was one of the first, and one of the few white students to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She was a birth control teacher at Planned Parenthood in New York, and is on the National Advisory Board of National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. She is an American Film Institute associate.
Achievements
Membership
Cats versus Chicks.
