Lucy Simon Dies: Broadway ’Secret Garden’ Composer, Sister Of Carly Simon Was 82

21.10.2022 - 18:27 / deadline.com

Lucy Simon, the Tony Award-nominated composer of Broadway’s 1991 musical The Secret Garden and sister of singer Carly Simon, died of breast cancer Thursday at her home in Piedmont, New York. She was 82.

Born into wealth and a rarified atmosphere of celebrity and literati as the second of four children to Simon & Schuster publisher Richard Simon and wife Andrea, Simon would enter show business herself in the early 1960s when she and younger sister Carly formed the folk singing duo The Simon Sisters, performing in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and New York City’s Greenwich Village. In 1964, the sisters recorded and released the song “Wynken, Blynken & Nod” to moderate success.

Within 10 years Carly Simon would become one of pop music’s most successful and commercially viable of the era’s singer-songrwriters, with hits including “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” and “Anticipation” in 1971, and, the following year, her smash signature tune “You’re So Vain,” which endures on classic pop radio and as an object of debate over the mystery man of the lyrics.

Lucy Simon, although attending nursing school in the late 1960s, would continue a musical career, albeit one of a lesser profile than her younger sister’s. In 1975 she recorded the album Lucy Simon and in 1977 Stolen Time, that latter featuring backup vocals by Carly and then-husband James Taylor on about half of the songs.

In the early ’80s, Simon and husband David Levine produced two children’s albums that would win Grammy Awards: In Harmony: A Sesame Street Record in 1981 and Harmony 2 in 1983.

Simon’s breakthrough success came in 1991 when she served as composer of the Broadway musical The Secret Garden, garnering a Tony Award nomination for Best Original