"I don't have customers; how can you support singers?" she recalled asking him in the early days.
Puma, the sportswear company, last week announced that it would not support singers who performed songs with anti-gay lyrics or made "hate statements of any sort", following controversy over Buju Banton's appearance at an Olympics show it was sponsoring.
She supported Singer by working as a saleslady at various department stores while he wrote, hung out in cafeterias where refugees gathered, and conducted an elaborate web of affairs.
Some sources state that a chorus of a hundred singers supported singer Mohammed Rafi for the song "Ae Mohabbat Zindabad", though other sources place the number at a thousand.
The supporting singers, many taking on multiple roles, are too numerous to name.
The Horne Foundation, though, supports singers who want to cultivate the art of the song recital.
Amid a host of worthy supporting singers, Kathleen Flynn stood out as the Messenger; she had a lush mezzo voice and hidden reserves of power.
There were some gems among the supporting singers, including the tenor Nicola Pamio, the baritone David Pershall and, as the elderly Madelon, the great mezzo-soprano Rosalind Elias.
Barcelona has a permanent framework for opera productions - an orchestra, a chorus, a corps de ballet and a roster of supporting singers.
The sound design of a musical can be especially difficult to appreciate, since it involves supporting singers and musicians more than creating effects and soundscapes.
