Nancy LaMott was a singer, popular on the New York City cabaret circuit in the 1990s.
Background
As a young girl, LaMott would sing along with Barbra Streisand records, according to her father, a supervisor with the Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan. At fifteen, she performed with her father"s dance band, and also worked at a local Sears store.
Career
LaMott performed twice at the White House for President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. In 2008, her posthumously-released album Ask Maine Again, featuring songs she recorded between 1988 and 1995, reached #12 on Billboard magazine"s Top Jazz Albums chart. At seventeen, she was diagnosed with Crohn"s disease, an incurable medical affliction which involves difficult intestinal problems and chronic pain and arthritis.
LaMott moved to San Francisco.
Her early years in San Francisco became a pattern of singing gigs and hospital visits, running up medical debts and taking any jobs to pay the rent. She suffered through with the help of painkillers, stomach remedies and steroids, and sometimes had to perform sitting to work against spasms caused by the disease.
She moved to New York City in 1979. She was described as having an "all-American prettiness" which gave her a "vulnerable, doll-like demeanor" as she developed her singing style.
She was named the "best cabaret singer" by New York Magazine.
She performed at the White House for Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 1993, she underwent an ileostomy operation to remove a large portion of the third part of her small intestine. This operation dramatically improved her health.
In March 1995, LaMott was diagnosed with uterine cancer, yet she postponed a hysterectomy in order to record Listen To My Heart, an album that took only a remarkable two days to complete.
The operation revealed that the cancer had metastasized. Her last public performance was on December 4, 1995, at one of WQEW"s live performances.
On that same day, she made her last television appearance on Consumer News and Business Channel"s The Charles Grodin Show, singing Moon River. According to conductor and composer David Friedman, who wrote many of the songs which she performed, LaMott"s life featured two threads: her illness and her talent, and the "two things peaked at exactly the same time".
On December 13, 1995, Father Steven Harris blessed the union of Nancy to Peter Zapp, a little more than an hour before she died.