Kenney resurfaced on Decca in 1958 with Sings for Playboys -- her masterpiece, Born to Be Blue, soon followed, and a year later she issued her swan song, Like Yesterday. Critics and fellow artists were virtually unanimous in their praise of Kenney's artistry, but the emergence of rock & roll virtually guaranteed she would remain anonymous to the public at large. Tellingly, during a May 18, 1958, appearance on NBC's The Steve Allen Show, she performed an original composition titled "I Hate Rock and Roll." Friends and colleagues generally cite Kenney as a melancholy, distant figure in the final months of her life, but her suicide at age 28 on April 13, 1960, still raises myriad questions: by most accounts, she spent her last hours writing each of her parents long, heartbreaking letters at the desk in her Greenwich Village flat before consuming a lethal overdose of alcohol and Seconal, but her motivations are unknown. A 1992 GQ magazine profile by Jonathan Schwartz suggests Kenney was despondent over the dissolution of her romance with Beat Generation guru Milton Klonsky, but a subsequent investigation by fan and journalist Bill Reed casts serious doubt on this theory. While a virtual footnote in her native U.S., Kenney boasts an ever-growing cult following in Japan, where all six of her LPs have remained in print. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi