The Blog of Less Renown, celebrating under-appreciated unusual, unique, sick or strange Singers, Songwriters and Songs
Friday, April 09, 2010
SUGAR LEE HOOPER : COLORFUL DUTCH DYKE DIES
Some think of Holland as that dull stereotype country where oversized wooden people wear over-sized wooden shoes and their lives are as monotonous as the windmills that pointlessly move in creaky circles day and night. People think that not only is the terrain flat, but so are their singers (hence the impossibility of thinking of a single important Dutch singer or rock group that made a difference in the world). And lastly, people question a country that, if known for anything at all, is known for cheese.
All of the above is grossly unfair, and nobody is more upset about it than the Dutch themselves, who cope with it the only way they know how: by legalized prostitution and marijuana bars. Yes, for all the talk about the Dutch being notoriously cheap, to the point of organizing groups of people to put up blogs just to steal music, the fact is that people in Holland actually do spend money on what's important; sex and drugs.
Sex and drugs are especially important in Holland these days because it helps the people forget about how they're being overrun with Muslim fanatics. Few countries have had a high-profile incident such as the assassination of Theo Van Gogh.
Yes, Holland has its miseries, and the proof is a shift in what they find entertaining. Neurotic countries such as the U.K. and U.S.A., have had a circus of performers such as Boy George and Britney "Shaved It Off Top and Bottom" Spears. For more than a decade, the gray and depressed mood in Holland was lightened up by the eccentric sunshine of Sugar Lee Hooper.
Since the mid 90's, she gave the Dutch something to counter their sedate stereotype of placid tulips and dykes that did nothing but stand still and ominously show their deepening cracks.
Born Marja van deer Toorn (February 23, 1948-April 4, 2010), she took her new name from gluttony (she loved desserts) and a fondness for old-time jazz singers (ok, how many of you knew that Lee Hooper was Billie Holiday's manager?)
Hans, her brother, wished that he could become famous before he became 64, and was quite happy when he and Marja combined forces for a few singles. Apparently Marja learned something important from Hans: be careful with time you have left. And so she went off in an entirely new direction, and became the drummer for a group called The Crazy Rockers. That gig lasted a dozen years until she happened to fall off the stage and sustain more damage than a simple twitch. Unable to go back behind the drum kit, she chose kitsch instead, and re-invented herself as a singer named "Sugar Lee Hooper."
Things didn't go so smoothly at first, and she struggled for several years, but in the mid 90's, she had two blockbuster hit albums in the Netherlands, "Lots of Sugar" in 1995, and "Toeters en Bellen" ("Bells and Whistles") in 1996. Sugar soon announced her "partnership" with Andrea van deer Kaap, and three years later, in 2001, the same-sex duo were married. They made history as the first famous same-sex married couple in Holland. (Compare that to 2005, when the U.K. witnessed the same-sex marriage between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.)
If Sugar Lee Hooper was beginning to resemble Boy George more and more, she probably wasn't happy about it, and so the aging dyke underwent a facelift in 2006, had her bulging stomach repaired in 2007, had her titties tidied up as well, and then in 2008 she took some time off to go to the hospital for something important…surgery for a tumor on her hip.
Hooper was slowing down, but perhaps not enough, because on March 28, while riding her scooter along a particularly boring patch of Holland, she fell and ended up lying in a tramline. It took a half hour to get an ambulance (the driver must've been advised to slow down by his doctor) and by the time the hospital got a hold of Sugar, things really went sour. During surgery for her injuries (which included a broken hip), she suffered a heart attack. Doctors feared brain injury as well, since there was some question over how much oxygen she was getting.
The doctors felt the best thing to do was to put the singer into a coma, and then see if they could figure out what to do. A few days later, they figured there was nothing they could do, and Sugar Lee did her impression of Stagger Lee, as she shuffled off to the real Nether regions.
Your sample is a typical bit of catchy disco called "Oh wat ben je mooi," which doesn't translate as "What a cow you've been," but "Oh, You're Pretty." And Sugar Lee Hooper certainly was, in a Boy George kind of way. Wasn't she?
OH WAt BEN JE MOOI No pop ups, porn ads or wait time
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