Pop legend Carly Simon is mourning the death of both her sisters, who died of cancer one day apart from each other.
Simon, 77, who was best known for her five decade long music career including hits You’re So Vain and That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be, this week survived her three siblings – with her younger brother Peter passing in 2018 at the age of 71 after being diagnosed with lung cancer.
Broadway composer Lucy Simon died of metastatic breast cancer Thursday at the age of 82, while Joanna Simon, an opera singer, died of thyroid cancer Wednesday at the age of 85.
Both deaths were confirmed to Deadline on Friday.
Lucy was best known for her Tony-nominated music for The Secret Garden.
Born to publisher Richard Simon and wife Andrea, the Simon sisters and their younger brother Peter all pursued music careers with high acclaim.
Carly previously recalled how her singing was a way of life for the Simons and told in her book started as a way to control a vexing stammer.
“We all came out singing,’‘ she once said of herself and her sisters. “And we kept on singing. At dinner we wouldn’t just say, ‘Please pass the salt, thank you.’ We’d sing it. Sometimes in the style of Gershwin. Sometimes as a lieder.”
In the early 1960s they formed the folk duo, The Simon Sisters, but they were not thrilled by the name as they felt they would be labelled 'another novelty sister act'.
“We would go to cocktail parties and bring our guitar and sing,” Lucy Simon told The New York Times in 2015. “And people loved it.”
Eventually, she added, they said to each other, “Let’s see if we can pay our way by singing.”
But the duo, who released Wynken, Blynken & Nod"in 1964, parted ways a few years later as Lucy attend nursing school before marrying David Levine in 1967. They share two children together; Jamie and Julie.
Lucy later returned to the music industry in the late '70s and paired with Levine, producing two Grammy-winning children's albums in the '80s; In Harmony and In Harmony 2 .
Speaking during an interview with The Times Lucy explained: "There’s something intangible and mysterious about music.
"It can get you more; you can sob more. It’s got a stronger engine."
Lucy's later success included becoming the third female composer on Broadway. Her score for 1991's The Secret Garden received a Tony nomination that year. Her second Broadway show, Doctor Zhivag o, opened in 2015 but lasted just 23 performances.
Joanna also got her start in the '60s, debuting in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the New York City Opera in 1962 , according to Playbill.
She left the world of opera, becoming a correspondent for PBS' The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour – a role she held until 1992.
Joanna was married to Gerald Walker from 1976 until his death in 2004. She was later in a relationship with news anchor Walter Cronkite in the final months before his death in 2019.
