Amy Winehouse’s Father Remembers Daughter On First Anniversary Of Her Death
It’s been exactly one year since Amy Winehouse passed away at the age of 27 on July 23, 2011. Though the singer’s fans may spend the day playing her music and remaining in awe of her talent, Amy’s father Mitch Winehouse celebrates his daughter’s life and mourns her death in an emotional post, simply titled, “Remembering Amy”.
“My mother passed her love of music on to me and I passed it on to Amy,” Mitch writes. “It formed a big part of my relationship with Amy and was as important to her as it was to me. Amy always surrounded herself with music, even during her darkest times.”
“Of course, I loved her voice – for me she was the greatest female vocalist of all time,” he continues. “But I also cherish Amy’s lyrics, and the part other music played in her life as she was growing up.”
Winehouse talks about hearing one of Amy’s first recordings, a cover of the 1930s standard “The Nearness Of You”. “More than a hundred artists have recorded ‘The Nearness of You’ — from Sarah Vaughan to Frank Sinatra to Judy Garland, even the Rolling Stones had a bash at it (and it wasn’t half bad) — but none of them, not one of them, is a patch on my Amy’s version. I still it play often. It was, and will always be, just beautiful.”
Though he still loves listening to her first LP, Frank, he finds it difficult to put on her Grammy-winning second album. “I have always found it hard to listen to the songs Amy wrote for Black to Black. That’s because all of the songs on that album, apart from ‘Rehab’, are about her ex-husband Blake, and all of the terrible things he put her through.”
He concludes his touching tribute to his daughter with a final thought: “Sometimes listening to Amy’s music helps me; sometimes it makes me feel more sad. I miss Amy more than I can say. When I’ve finished writing this I’m going to sit down with a cup of tea and listen to Amy’s recording of The Nearness of You.”
Read the full write-up at Huffington Post. Besides posting this beautiful piece on his daughter, Mitch Winehouse has said that he’ll be spending the anniversary of her death by heading to Amy’s house for Jewish prayer with her fans, to be followed by a party at Amy’s favorite jazz bar, Jazz After Dark. “There are going to be lots of tears and lots of laughter and that is exactly how Amy would have wanted it,” he says.
Mitch Winehouse’s book, Amy, My Daughter, is on sale now. All proceeds from sales of the book will be donated to the Amy Winehouse Foundation.
