Elyse Weinberg

Elyse J. Weinberg (October 25, 1945 – February 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American singer-songwriter. In later life she used the name Cori Bishop.

Biography Weinberg was born in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. She and her family moved to Montreal when she was 12, and she started playing guitar. She began playing in folk clubs, and studied at McGill University, before dropping out in 1963 to pursue a music career in Toronto, where she played regularly in clubs and at the Mariposa Folk Festival. She later commented: "There was quite a scene – Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Ian and Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot. We all hung out and played together." After travelling to Europe and Israel, she returned to Toronto and formed a folk-rock band, O.D. Bodkins & Company, with Ken Koblun (formerly a bandmate of Young in the Squires) and others.

She moved briefly to New York, and then to Los Angeles to meet up with her friend Neil Young, who had just formed Buffalo Springfield. She stayed with Cass Elliot, who introduced her to her manager, Roy Silver. After hearing Weinberg's songs, Silver signed her to the Tetragrammaton label, co-owned by Silver with Bill Cosby and others. Weinberg released her first album, Elyse, in 1969. With Young on guitar, a studio band called Touch, and produced by Don Gallucci, the album was described as a "mixture of death-fixated medieval folk, imaginative pop arrangements and very 60's psychedelic rock". She agreed that it be reissued, with a bonus track featuring Neil Young. As a result of the new attention, she began performing again with a band, as Baby Cori and the Buds. In 2009, as Elyse, she released a new album, In My Own Sweet Time. Her second album, Greasepaint Smile, was also released on CD. Her songs were covered by Vetiver, Dinosaur Jr., and Courtney Barnett.

Elyse Weinberg died in 2020, aged 74, from lung cancer.