Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper was born on June 22, 1953, to Italian and German parents in Brooklyn, New York. She and her two siblings (a brother and a sister) were raised in the neighboring borough of Queens, New York, in the Ozone Park section, and her Queens accent is one of her most prominent trademarks. She dropped out of high school, and began singing in a number of local cover bands. Soon she began writing and performing her own material with keyboardist, John Turi, but her vocal chords became so strained that in 1977 she almost quit singing altogether. She then took voice lessons from prominent New York vocal coach, Katherine Agresta. By 1980, she released a rockabilly album on Polydor with her group, The Blue Angel. (Name derives from her love of Marlena Dietrich and all of her films.) In Lauper’s own words, despite much critical acclaim, the album went “lead,” and she was forced to file for bankruptcy and disband the group.
The year 1983 would prove to be an important one for Cyndi, the beginning of her coming into her own as a major pop star. She began dating her manager, David Wolff, and with him released the album, “She’s So Unusual”, which became a worldwide hit and made the name of Cyndi Lauper a household world. The album’s biggest hit, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” became an anthem for “new age” women everywhere, and she won a Grammy Award for “Best New Artist” in 1984 for her work on this album. She became the first female recording artist to have four consecutive top 5 hits from one album!
Cyndi Lauper is a performer who is known for her outrageous antics and wild hair colors. As birds of a feather often flock together, entertainer/preacher Little Richard performed her wedding ceremony when she married David Thornton in November of 1991. The couple has one son and lives in a famous apartment building on New York’s Upper West Side known as the Anthrop.
Voted #58 of the top 100 females voices of rock n’ roll, Cyndi is loved by many adoring fans.
Keep rockin’ Cyndi!