here's to sylvia syms, the young one as well as the old one ....
here's to sylvia syms, the queen of vaudeville, the "greatest saloon singer" as frank sinatra used to call her, here's to this great singer, either old (as here, in this very moving reading of the most famous homosexual noel coward love song) or young (as below, in one of the marvelous songs from her very first album) ....

sylvia syms/i'm mad about the boy (1991)/ the year following that performance, sylvia syms died of a heart attack on the bandstand of the oak room in the algonquin hotel in new york (she was seventy-four).

sylvia syms/there's something about an old love (1952) /a few years before, at seventeen, this fat jewish singer used to be a groupie to billie holiday/ and it was this young kid, this young sylvia syms, who had the idea -billie had burnt her hair en essayant de se défriser les cheveux- to put a gardenia in her hair ....