MELODY GARDOT
Who Will Comfort Me
DOWNLOAD: Who Will Comfort Me
CBS Sunday Morning did a wonderfully moving profile this past week on Melody Gardot, a 24 year-old jazz singer from Philadelphia, but far better known in Paris where she is held in such high regard that her recent album, My One and Only Thrill, went double-platinum almost the second it was released! But they weren’t featuring her just because of her singing…no, the real story is how she fought back from a near-fatal accident where she was mowed down while riding her bike by a guy who ran a red light. She suffered serious head and spinal injuries and her pelvis was shattered in two places. As a result she was confined to her hospital bed for a year and had to remain lying on her back. The most noticeable effect of the injuries she suffered is that she was left hyper-sensitive to both light and sound and wears dark sunglasses at all times to shield her eyes. The accident also caused both long and short term memory problems and difficulty with her sense of time. As therapy, she began writing music…at first, she learned to hum but was eventually able to sing into a tape recorder. Making a verbal attempt to sing or hum apparently helped her brain form new neural pathways to take over for the ones damaged in the accident. All things considered, it’s a pretty amazing story. You should check her out on MySpace or on her website!
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