A golden voice goes silent: Lynne Thigpen, the award-winning actress who died this past spring, was the hardest working narrator in audiobooks - tribute - Obituary

Black Issues Book Review, July-August, 2003 by Gwendolyn E. Osborne

Actress Lynne Thigpen may be best known for her work on television, on stage and in films, but when she died on March 12 in Los Angeles at age 54, she also left behind an impressive legacy of African American literature on tape. Her unique voice lives on in hundreds of hours of taped books by Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler, Ernest Gaines, Gloria Naylor, Ann Petry and others. Most of these audiobooks are unabridged and were done for Recorded Books' African American imprint, Griot Audio[TM]. (See "Selected Recordings by Lynne Thigpen," below.)

Thigpen brought to her craft a dignity and professionalism that allowed the voice of the narrator to peacefully coexist with the author's literary voice. In 1999, Ms. Thigpen played the complex characters in Jacqueline Woodson's award-winning book, I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This. The young-adult story dealt honestly with issues of friendship, racism, abuse and peer pressure. Critics praised Ms. Thigpen's narration as "steady, unhurried [and], determined to maintain the vocal integrity of the single first-person narrator."

"Lynne did such a beautiful job," recalls Woodson. "You could tell she totally got the story. It was in her voice, her intonation, the places she paused. There was such love in her work--as with all the work I've seen of hers."

"Lynne Thigpen is to narration as Marian Anderson was to music," wrote Dallas Morning News critic Kate Seago of the actress' performance on Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. "Her rich contralto, with both range and depth, is unwavering throughout this sometimes rawboned story."

In 1999, Audiofile magazine named Thigpen as one of its "Golden Voices," a select group of 19 narrators who have shown "dedication to this burgeoning art form" and who "have defined the craft of audiobook narration."

Born Cherylynne Thigpen on December 22, 1948, in Joliet, Illinois, she shortened her first name to prevent frequent mispronounciations. "I had a hard enough last name to deal with," she told a Wall Street Journal reporter. "I didn't want to have to fight for my first name, too."

It was in Joliet that Thigpen's love of performing began. She was a member of the high school theater, debate and a cappella clubs. "I was into everything," she once said, "always a singer and always a performer." Encouraged by her high school English and speech teacher, Thigpen developed a knack for taking on a variety of roles that would mark her professional career. For example, in high school she was once cast opposite a white student as a romantic lead in Bye Bye Birdie.

After graduating from high school in 1966, Thigpen attended the University of Illinois, majoring in English and speech. After a brief stint as a high school teacher, she received an acting fellowship for the masters' program at the University of Illinois. Ms. Thigpen left graduate school after only one semester to join the Broadway cast of the musical Godspell in a role she would later re-create in the 1973 film.

She would go on to win a Los Angeles Drama Critic's Award for her work in Fences, an Obie Award for Boesman and Lena, and a Tony Award for An American Daughter. Ms. Thigpen earned four Emmy nominations for her role in the PBS program Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and was nominated for the NAACP's Image Award for her work in the daytime TV drama All My Children. Her film credits include Lean on Me, Tootsie and, most recently, Anger Management. At the time of her death, Ms. Thigpen was costarring in the CBS drama The District.

Selected Recordings by Lynne Thigpen

The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison, Recorded Books,
ISBN 0-788-75325-8 (unabridged)

Gather Together in My Name
by Maya Angelou, Recorded Books,
ISBN 0-788-76205-2 (unabridged)

House of Dries
by Virginia Hamilton, Recorded Books
ISBN 0-788-78616-4 (unabridged)

How Stella Got Her Groove Back
by Terry Mc Millan, Recorded Books
ISBN 0-788-70755-8 (unabridged)

Let the Circle by Unbroken
by Mildred D. Taylor, Recorded Books
ISBN 0-788-70168-X (unabridged)

The Women of Brewster Place
by Gloria Naylor, Recorded Books
ISBN 0-788-78565-5 (unabridged)

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler,
Recorded Books, ISBN 0-788-76321-0

Transitions Noted

* Beloved writing teacher and mentor

Fred Hudson, 74, president and artistic director of New York City's Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, on February 13 in Manhattan. He cofounded FDCAC with screenwriter Budd Schulberg as a writers' development program in 1971, and its low-cost workshops served as the training ground for many young novelists, poets, nonfiction authors, screenwriters, dramatists and actors who later made a name for themselves. Hudson himself was the screenwriter for the 1974 film The Education of Sonny Carson, based on the autobiography of the black activist who also died late last year.

* Beat and Black Arts Movement poet

Ted Joans, 74, poet, performer and traveling storyteller, musician, friend and cohort of Amiri Baraka (when he was LeRoi Jones), John Coltrane, Kwame Ture (when he was Stokely Carmichael), Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; on May 7 in Vancouver. loans was widely anthologized by writers from Langston Hughes to Sonia Sanchez. He is reputed to have written the immortal graffito "Bird Lives" on the sidewalks of New York when musician Charlie Parker died in 1955. Joans, who was born Theodore Jones, lived in Paris and traveled in Europe and Africa for decades until he recently settled in Canada. He was truly an original character whose like we shall not soon see again.