Her personal and musical life enhanced by motherhood, singer-songwriter Lucy Kaplansky served as the perfect artist to cap off a special edition of Mountain Stage celebrating the 101th observance of Mother's Day.
The Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, W.Va., is a national landmark, recognized as the International Mother's Day Shrine. It's the site where Anna Jarvis organized a public Mother's Day celebration in 1908. On May 11, 2008, Kaplansky and the Mountain Stage band commemorated the holiday with a tribute to all mothers in the same church where the holiday began 100 years ago.
After graduating from high school, Kaplansky moved to New York and became a mainstay in the city's folk scene, often harmonizing with Shawn Colvin and similar artists. But while contemporaries such as Suzanne Vega, John Gorka, and Cliff Eberhardt went on to sign record deals, Kaplansky left music to earn a doctorate in psychology.
Even while running her private practice, Kaplansky was always singing, usually on albums by her aforementioned peers. After she returned to recording and performing full-time in the 1990s, Kaplansky and fellow singer-songwriters Dar Williams and Richard Shindell formed the group Cry Cry Cry. Her latest solo album, Over the Hills, came out last year.
This segment originally ran July 14, 2008.
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