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Sylvia Syms was born Sylvia Blagman on December 2, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. As a child she contracted polio but overcame it and by the time she was a teenager she was hanging in the infamous jazz haunts on 52nd Street. She received informal training from Billie Holiday and in 1941 she made her debut at Kelly’s Stable.
In 1948, performing at the Cinderella Club in Greenwich Village she was seen by Mae West, who gave her a part in a show she was doing. Among others who observed her in nightclubs was Frank Sinatra who considered her the “world’s greatest saloon singer.” Sinatra subsequently conducted her 1982 album, Syms by Sinatra.
Signing a redocrd deal with Decca Records in 1956, Sylvia had her major success with a recording of I Could Have Danced All Night selling over a million copies garnering a gold disc. She would appear regularly at the Carlyle in Manhattan, at times, impromptu, while enjoying a cocktail in the bar of the Carlyle, she would walk on stage and perform with the cabaret’s other regular, Bobby Short.
She had a lung removed in 1972, despite which, she shortly thereafter performed as a well received Bloody Mary in South Pacific for several months at the Chateau de Ville Dinner. Vocalist Sylvia Syms, who recorded seventeen albums, appeared in six films and guested on The Tonight Show, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas, Dick Cavett, Playboy’s Penthouse, and American Masters, passed away of a heart attack while on stage at the Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel in New York City at age 74 on May 10, 1992.
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